AND 


I     LIBRARY 


V    SAHOIHSO    J 


DA-' 


•' 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 


WRITINGS  OF  W.  L.  GEORGE 
NOVELS 

CALIBAN 

BUND  ALLEY 

THE  STRANGERS'   WEDDING 

THE  SECOND   BLOOMING 

A   BED   OP   ROSES 

CITY   OF  LIGHT 
KAUSCH 

(Am firm  TilU :  UNTIL  THB  DAT  BRRAT) 
THE   MAKING   OP   AN   ENGLISHMAN 

(Amtrirtm  TilU:  THB  Lrrn-B  BSLOVKD) 
OLGA   XAZIMOV    (SHOW  STORIES) 

MISCELLANEOUS 

WOMAN   AND  TO-MORROW 
DRAMATIC   ACTUALITIES 
ANATOLB  PRANCE 
THE   INTELLIGENCE  OP  WOMAN 
A  NOVELIST   ON   NOVELS 

(Amtrutn  TitU:  LITBXAKT  CBAPTZBS) 
EDDIES  OP  THE  DAY 


1     /  I  ';  !         .'   \     l\     l\ 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

Text  by 

W.  L.   GEORGE 

Pictures  by 

PHILIPPE   FORBES-ROBERTSON 


NEW  YORK 
FREDERICK   A.    STOKES    COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright,  1921 


Manufactured  in  Great  Britain 


CONTENTS 


CHAP. 


I.  PRELUDE 

II.  PLAYGROUNDS  *3 

III.  THE    FRIENDLY    BOWL  35 

IV.  WANDERERS  43 

V.  SOUPS    AND    STEWS  °X 

VI.  IN    SEARCH    OF   VICE  75 

VII.  THE    POOR  **5 

VIII.  STONES  99 

IX.  CAFE*    ROYAL  IZ9 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


HYDE  PARK 

THE  REGENT  CANAL  AT  MAIDA  HILL 

CUMBERLAND  HAY-MARKET 

THE  PUB 

FLOWER-GIRL 

THE  HEART  OF  THE  CITY 

SOHO  MARKET 

THE  SAVOY 

SHOPPING 

THE  CHELSEA  ARTS  BALL 

SHEPHERD'S  MARKET 

THE  TUBE,  9.30  A.M. 

AN  ABSENT  DESERT!  THE  CROMWELL  RCAD 

BEASTS  AT  THE  ZOO 

THE  CAFf  ROYAL 

PRIVATE  VIEW:    THE  A.AJV. 

THE  GOOD  INTENT,  CHELSEA 


Frontispiece 
Facing  page  6 

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126 


I 

PRELUDE 


CHAPTER  I 

PRELUDE 

THE  first  thing  that  impresses  me  as  I  begin  this  short  book  on 
London  is  the  large  number  of  subjects  of  which  I  will  say  nothing. 
There  are  many  reasons  for  this.  One  is  that  a  title  such  as  A 
London  Mosaic  is  as  difficult  to  compose  to  as  Life  or  Love.  (Two 
novels  are  still  on  sale  under  these  somewhat  atlasian  titles,  but 
as  an  author  does  not  wish  to  be  unkind  in  the  first  paragraphs 
of  a  book,  they  need  not  be  reviewed.)  Another  reason  is  that 
Mr  E.  V.  Lucas,  Mrs  E.  T.  Cook,  John  o'  London,  Mr  G.  R. 
Sims,  have  compiled  various  volumes  of  passionate  Baedeker, 
and  I  hesitate  to  set  my  feet  in  their  mighty  footprints.  For  so 
much  of  this  London  is  unknown  to  me,  and  I  have  learnt  little 
of  her,  indeed,  learned  little  except  to  love  her.  Thus,  in  this 
book,  you  will  find  no  lists  of  houses  where  famous  people  lived. 
This  may  seem  strange,  but  it  wakes  in  me  no  thrill  to  see  a 
circular  plate  of  debased  wedgwood  imposed  by  a  maternal  L.C.C. 
upon  a  wall  of  innocent  stucco  coated  with  eternal  dirt.  To  read 
that  William  Hazlitt  died  here,  or  lived  there,  does  not  add  much 
to  the  fact  that  William  Hazlitt  lived.  It  may  be  interesting  to  know 
that  Hazlitt  chose  that  sort  of  house,  though  it  is  likely  that  he 
did  not  choose  it,  but  accepted  it;  a  house  does  not  define  a  man 
of  worth,  for  men  of  worth  are  mostly  poor,  and  their  houses 
reflect  them  not.  Many  must  have  hated  them.  Yet,  I  happen 
to  know  Huxley's  house  in  St  John's  Wood,  and  Carlyle's  house 
in  Chelsea  (there  is  no  getting  over  that  one  when  friends  arrive 
from  America),  but  it  is  not  exciting  knowledge,  and  I  incline  to 
rejoice  with  Kingsley  that  it  is  not  the  house  one  lives  in  matters, 
but  the  house  opposite.  Unfortunately,  the  house  opposite  is 
generally  just  as  bad:  the  only  thing  that  reconciles  one  to  one's 
house  is  that  the  people  opposite  see  most  of  it. 

I  shall  not  tell  you  anything  of '  quaint  corners,'  or  '  picturesque 
bits.'  I  will  not  cut  up  and  pickle  London.  Ever  since  the  days 
of  Dickens  (or  is  it  since  those  of  Dr  Syntax  ?)  people  have  ranged 

3 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

our  unfortunate  town  armed  with  a  butterfly-net:  swoop!  caught 
Cloth  Fairl  Another  swoop!  Staple  Inn  lies  in  the  butterfly-net. 
Quick,  into  the  pickle-jar.  Now  for  the  cyanide.  Here  they  are, 
London  butterflies,  ready  for  delineation  by  Mr  Hugh  Thompson. 
No,  I  will  pickle  you  no  living  strips  of  London  Town,  and  I 
promise  that  not  once  will  I  portray  a  humorous  bus-conductor. 
One  reason  is  that  there  are  no  humorous  bus-conductors;  there 
are  only  raucous  brutes,  working  long  hours,  and  maintained  in 
a  state  of  pessimism  because  these  long  hours  separate  them 
from  the  public-house.  They  do  not,  however,  separate  them 
enough. 

There  will  be  no  East  in  the  West,  nor  West  in  the  East. 
There  will  be  no  list  of  statues,  for  nobody  ever  looks  at  statues. 
There  is  a  statue  of  George  Stephenson  at  Euston,  and  one  of 
William  Pitt  in  Hanover  Square.  That  is  very  interesting,  isn't 
it  ?  It  is  a  terrible  commentary  upon  fame  that  when  you  erect 
a  statue  to  a  man  he  becomes  invisible.  You  pass  a  statue  every 
day,  but  you  never  look  at  it,  you  pass  it.  Nobody  cares  for 
statues,  except  the  birds,  who  make  them  a  venue  for  love  and  war. 
Christopher  Wren  did  say  that  if  you  required  a  monument  you 
should  look  about  you;  thus  does  the  London  population.  Those 
who  have  noticed  Mr  Peabody,  miraculously  encased  in  a  frock 
coat  several  sizes  too  small,  Mr  Huskisson  stark  naked,  and  one 
of  the  Georges  on  his  little  horse,  trotting  to  nowhere  in  particular, 
as  was  the  way  of  his  dynasty,  will  agree  that  it  is  no  wonder 
statues  fail  to  arouse  even  merriment. 

No,  there  are  no  statues  in  this  book.  There  are  no  pictures 
either.  I  shall  not  tell  you  how  to  find  the  Madonna  degli  Ansidei 
in  the  National  Gallery,  nor  direct  you  to  the  Flaxmans  of 
University  College.  The  catalogues  can  do  that.  That  is,  if 
you  want  to  know,  and  are  not  one  of  the  ordinary  beings  who 
use  the  museums  to  get  out  of  the  rain  or  for  the  innocent  purposes 
of  courtship.  (I  recommend  the  Geological;  chilly,  but  leads  to 
concentration).  Sometimes,  in  remorseful  mood,  when  the  word 
'  ought,'  which  as  a  rule  means  little  to  me,  suddenly  assumes 
material  shape  to  the  extent  of  a  faint  mist,  I  tell  myself  that  I  am 
4 


PRELUDE 

very  uneducated,  and  regrettably  unrepentant,  that  I  '  ought ' 
to  care  that  Swift  lived  in  Bury  Street  and  Sir  Isaac  Newton  in 
Jermyn  Street,  and  that  I  *  ought '  to  find  desecration  in  the  fact 
that  where  the  dog  Diamond  barked,  the  plates  of  Jules's  Balkan 
waiters  clatter.  And  I  go  to  Jules's  to  lunch  and  to  meditate  on 
gravitation.  But  Jules  can  cook,  and  while  eating  his  meats  you 
do  not  meditate;  and  he  is  so  popular  that  as  soon  as  you  have 
finished  those  meats,  you  are  driven  out  by  the  eyes  of  some  young 
couple,  beaming  with  love  and  appetite.  Nor  may  you  meditate 
opposite  the  houses  of  the  great;  it  annoys  the  police.  So,  after 
this  faint  attempt,  the  slender  '  ought '  evaporates.  Perhaps 
because  of  that  I  have  not  yet  succeeded  in  visiting  the  Tower, 
the  Roman  Bath,  the  Foundling,  the  Soane  Museum,  the  Mint, 
and  many  other  places  which  doubtless  would  improve  my 
mind. 

I  am  not  a  student,  but  a  lover  of  London;  it  amuses  me 
much  more  to  notice  that  one  man  shouts:  *  Paw  Maw!  Exper! 
Paw  Maw!'  while  another  does  it  like  this:  '  Per  Mer!  Gatesh- 
pozervenment!  '  than  to  bask  in  the  knowledge  that  Johnson 
lived  in  Gough  Square.  This  arises,  I  suppose,  from  having  taken 
London  as  I  found  her,  and  from  not  being  a  Londoner.  The 
first  twenty  years  of  my  life  having  been  spent  in  another  country, 
I  did  not  treat  London  as  a  relation,  but  as  some  one  whom  I 
liked.  Everything  of  her  was  interesting,  and  there  is  to-day  no 
mews  where  I  cannot  hear  the  footsteps  of  her  smutty  nymphs. 
The  entry  into  London  is  such  a  romantic  march;  I  say  march 
because  it  is  worth  doing  on  foot.  But  as  I  speak  to  Londoners, 
we  had  better  do  it  by  train,  for  they  would  grow  tired  of  her. 
When  Londoners  say  *  London,'  they  mean  Piccadilly,  Selfridges, 
Covent  Garden,  that  sort  of  thing,  and  that  is  not  London.  London 
is  Tottenham  and  Chiswick,  the  *  Paragon,'  Mile  End,  Walker's 
Court  and  what  it  sells,  and  the  black  doss  places  under  the  railway 
arches.  London  is  Houndsditch,  where  everybody  looks  bad, 
and  Cornwall  Gardens  where  everybody  looks  good.  London 
is  a  congress-house  of  emotions. 

When  one  looks  at  the  map,  particularly  if  it  is  on  a  large 

5 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

scale,  London  looks  like  a  splash,  rather  longer  than  it  is  broad, 
with  railway  lines  radiating  in  all  directions,  rather  like  a  spider's 
web,  the  centre  being  tenanted  by  whoever  you  like.  And  one 
thinks  of  Dick  Whittington  gaily  treading  in  the  spider's  web. 
But,  in  fact,  one  does  not  come  out  of  the  everywhere  into  the  here 
of  London.  One  melts  into  London,  and  one  hardly  knows  how 
one  comes  to  abandon  the  rest  of  the  world.  There  is  a  moment 
when  the  Essex  or  Kentish  marsh  ceases  to  lap  so  uniformly 
against  Medway  or  Thames.  One  has  a  sense  of  population,  of 
rather  large  houses  set  rather  far  apart,  but  not  yet  so  far  apart 
as  in  the  counties;  of  grounds  less  richly  endowed  with  the  high 
walls  crowned  with  broken  glass  which  announce  that  respectable 
people  live  inside.  One  reads  names  on  the  platforms:  '  Brent- 
wood,'  or  *  Mailing,'  and  there  is  a  sprinkling  of  villas,  with  plenty 
of  white  paint  and  concrete,  and  red  roofs  and  leaded  panes.  One 
glimpses  cerise  curtains,  and  one  knows  with  painful  accuracy 
where  to  look  for  the  back  of  the  swing  mirror.  Then,  again,  gaps, 
cows.  It  must  have  been  a  mistake,  it  is  not  London  after  all! 
But  there  come  more  platforms  and  more  villas,  then  a  row  of 
shops,  shops  not  branded  with  the  names  one  would  expect  to 
find,  such  as  '  Boots  '  or  *  Home  and  Colonial,'  but  brisk,  individual 
little  shops  belonging  to  Smith,  and  to  Jones,  yet  strangely  alike 
in  build,  furnished  by  the  same  shopfitter,  just  as  the  owners  will 
be  buried  by  the  same  undertaker.  (He  is  quite  ready,  for  he 
owns  one  of  the  shops.)  That  is  individualism,  which,  like  the 
camomile  plant,  is  ever  bruised  and  ever  arises. 

The  train  rumbles  on,  and  the  houses  change.  They  are  still 
detached,  but  less  detached:  they  are  separated  by  privet  hedges 
over  which  a  man  can  look,  and  so  they  have  an  air  of  fellowship. 
Suddenly,  one  enters  a  little  colony  of  houses;  one  sees  a  postman 
on  foot  instead  of  on  a  bicycle,  a  horse  omnibus  and  no  carrier's 
cart;  one  sees  a  policeman  too:  the  world  is  growing  less  respect- 
able; it  must  be  London  after  all.  But  again  come  gaps  and  cows, 
except  that  now  the  gaps  are  described  as  *  desirable  freehold  sites  ' 
with  loudly  advertised  frontages.  The  earth  is  already  torn  up, 
and  excavations  are  turning  into  roads;  one  observes  a  solitary 


r 

H  T" 

£  ~ 

W  <! 


w 


H 


PRELUDE 

gas-lamp,  and  on  a  board  the  words  '  Macedonia  Avenue.'  No 
avenue  is  built  yet,  but  it  is  foredoomed  to  Macedonia. 

All  that  is  the  overflow  of  London ;  it  is  the  fugitive  London 
which  has  no  love  or  understanding  of  the  town.  The  movement 
of  a  Londoner  who  rises  in  life  seems  to  follow  a  definite  curve; 
if  he  begins  in  Whitechapel  the  wheel  of  fortune  may  take  him  to 
Streatham ;  after  a  while  he  will  dream  of  a  place  in  the  country 
and  realise  his  dream  perhaps  at  Purley  Oaks;  by  the  time  his  son 
has  come  back  from  Oxford,  his  wife  will  have  been  ambitious 
enough  to  remove  him  to  South  Kensington;  thence,  the  last 
step,  to  God's  quadrilateral  between  Oxford  Street  and  Piccadilly, 
Regent  Street,  and  Park  Lane.  After  the  bankruptcy  the  process 
is  reversed.  Outward,  then  inward,  and  outward  again.  It  is 
like  the  tide. 

But  the  train  goes  on,  and  unexpectedly,  we  find  age  after 
youth,  Croydon,  Sydenham,  Edmonton,  places  where  again  the 
walls  are  high,  the  oaks  thick,  where  are  deep  lawns,  heavy  stucco 
fronts,  little  crowded  streets  with  spreading  market  places.  We 
breathe  the  air  of  genteel  sleep.  Genteel,  perhaps,  but  restless 
sleep,  for  these  are  old  villages  made  into  islands. 

They  seem  vaguely  annoyed  among  the  trams;  they  blink  at 
the  sky-signs  and  the  objurgations  of  Bovril.  But  it  is  too  late; 
round  each  little  group  run  fifty  streets,  each  one  comprising  a 
hundred  houses  or  so,  all  complete,  with  Nottingham  lace  curtain 
and  Virginia  creeper.  The  old  house  may  call  itself  '  The  Lodge,' 
but  '  Chatsworth  '  and  4  Greville  Towers  '  are  round  the  corner. 
Indeed,  we  forget  them  as  we  go  on,  for  now,  as  the  train  roars 
over  railway  bridges,  through  cuttings,  we  look  down  on  the 
endless  congestion  of  suburban  roofs,  each  one  separated  from  its 
neighbour  by  what  the  builder  regrettably  calls  a  '  worm.' 

And  yet  it  is  not  London.  For  London  has  yet  to  burst  upon 
our  eyes,  in  the  shape  of  strident  Clapham  Road,  or  Brixton 
Road,  true  London  of  the  black,  greasy  pavement  and  the  orange 
peel  of  which  Private  Ortheris  babbled  in  his  delirium.  We 
have  still  to  come  to  the  giant  warehouses  and  their  ambitious 
grayness,  to  the  flat  mass  of  gray,  yellow,  and  black,  broken  only 

7 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

by  the  washing  that  hangs  to  dry,  and  the  narrow  gardens  where 
droops  the  nasturtium.  At  last  here  is  working  London,  little, 
nestling,  hard,  grimy  London,  gritty,  troglodyte  London,  London 
of  crowded  shop  and  public-house,  of  tramway  and  clotted  traffic, 
and  yelping  children.  That  is  London  of  many  heads  and,  to  me, 
all  smiling. 

It  is  only  later,  when  at  last  we  reach  the  river  that  is  gray  as 
a  cygnet,  and  see  London  rising  in  a  hundred  solemn  spires,  that 
we  come  to  understand  London,  to  feel  the  use  of  that  white, 
central  pomp;  as  well  of  that  opulence  as  of  the  smiling  cleanliness 
of  the  outer  ring,  of  the  blackness  of  the  inner  ring.  For  all  that 
is  part  of  London's  world,  and  it  is  well  that  she  should,  within 
herself,  comprise  all  ugliness  and  all  beauty.  For  this  makes  her 
worth  exploring. 

The  secret  of  a  city's  exploration  does  not  lie  in  the  dutiful 
following  of  itineraries,  but  rather  in  a  lover-like  submission  to 
its  moods.  One  should  eat  in  various  places,  not  only  within  the 
stereotyped  square  mile  which,  in  London,  in  Paris,  or  in  Petrograd, 
is  loudly  labelled  as  the  foreigner's  restaurant.  One  must  seek 
culinary  adventure  far  afield,  at  Harrow,  and  at  Tulse  Hill,  in 
Piccadilly  and  Norton  Folgate;  and  let  me  assure  you  that  there 
exists  a  subtle  difference  between  the  cooking  at  the  Cheapside 
A.B.C.  and  its  fellow  in  the  Brixton  Road. 

Also  one  should  readily  cede  to  the  fancy  that  is  bred  by  a 
beautiful  place  name.  It  is  true  that,  as  a  rule,  the  most  attractive 
names  lead  to  the  least  attractive  places,  but  on  the  way  one  touches 
singularity  often,  and  beauty  sometimes.  My  Baedeker  has 
always  been  Kelly's  Directory;  that  is  one  of  the  books  I  should 
like  to  find  in  my  restricted  library  if  I  were  wrecked  on  a  desert 
island.  For,  sitting  under  my  bread-fruit  tree,  warm  in  my 
garment  of  yakskin,  and  smoking  an  earthen  pipe  of  dried  I  don't 
know  what  leaf,  Kelly's  Directory  would  bring  up  dreams,  dreams 
such  as  these:  Seven  Sisters'  Road,  Satchwell  Rents,  Beer  Lane, 
and  Whetstone  Park.  All  those  dreams  have  come  true,  and  thus 
a  little  of  my  fervour  has  been  abated  by  their  materialisation ;  by 
the  discovery  of  Seven  Sisters'  Road  as  gray,  refuse-strewn,  rich 
8 


W  « 

* 


PRELUDE 

in  Victorian  goodness  and  in  modern  slum;  of  Satchwell  Rents 
as  a  dusty  affluent  into  Bethnal  Green  Road,  shuttered,  and  locked, 
and  suspicious.  Whetstone  Park,  of  course,  is  not  at  Whetstone, 
but  just  off  New  Oxford  Street,  and  there  is  no  park  there.  But 
still,  those  names,  like  Orme  Square,  that  secludes  itself  from  the 
Bayswater  Road  behind  its  column  and  its  defiant  eagle,  like 
Cumberland  Market,  Hanoverian,  naked,  whose  many  iron  posts 
await  cattle  that  never  come,  contain  the  seed  of  romance  because 
they  induce  quest.  And  so  I  will  not  be  discouraged  yet,  but  soon 
must  discover  what  stones  have  wrought  Jedburgh  Street  and 
Parsifal  Road. 

Yet  those  streets,  and  roads,  and  squares  that  have  their  place 
in  Kelly  are,  after  all,  only  the  outer  shell  which  the  true  lover 
must  break  through.  If  he  is  a  true  lover,  he  will  soon  understand 
that  London  lies  behind  the  streets.  He  will  realise  that  between 
two  streets  there  is  often  more  than  two  rows  of  houses  and  of 
gardens  or  yards.  He  will  have  discovered  that  in  the  core  of 
those  blocks  of  masonry  lives  an  inner  London.  Into  that  core 
there  is  but  one  way,  which  I  will  call  the  slits.  We  all  know 
slits,  little  spaces  between  houses,  that  lead  inwards,  you  know  not 
whither.  You  pass  them  every  day,  perhaps,  and  never  turn 
aside,  yet  through  those  slits  is  the  way  in.  There  is  one,  for 
instance,  near  Netting  Hill  Gate.  They  call  it  Bulmer  Place, 
though  it  is  only  six  feet  broad  and  is  buried  under  an  archway. 
Enter;  ten  yards  lead  you  to  an  old  cottage  settlement,  where  no 
house  exceeds  two  floors,  where  each  has  its  garden,  its  creeper 
and  its  cat,  where  washing  floats  undisturbed,  and,  on  fine  after- 
noons, public  beanoes  take  place.  This  is  an  old  London  village, 
caught  between  the  warehouses  and  shops,  yet  maintained  by  the 
magic  law  of  ancient  lights. 

There  is  another  slit,  less  well  known,  quite  near  Kensington 
Square.  To  the  ordinary  eye,  Kensington  Square  is  entirely 
civilised,  and  none  live  there  unless  they  have  both  money  and 
good  taste.  In  the  far  south-west  corner  stands  a  convent,  that 
stares  forth  blankly  upon  this  world.  But  walk  south-east  and 
turn  to  the  right,  and  go  on  until,  past  low,  white  cottages  grown 

L  M.  B  9 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

with  sterile  vine,  you  meet  a  brick  wall.  On  the  way,  small  houses, 
well  locked,  that  are  quiet  and  green,  will  have  seen  you  pass 
without  approval.  If  adventure  is  not  for  you,  you  will  turn  back 
on  seeing  the  brick  wall;  if,  however,  it  is,  you  will  go  on,  and, 
on  your  right,  find  a  slit  so  small  that  you  may  not  open  your 
umbrella  in  it.  This  they  call  South  End;  if  you  persevere  you 
shall  come  to  rustic  cottages  of  plaster,  and  at  last  discover,  single- 
floored  against  the  side  of  a  great  block  of  flats,  the  cottage  and 
garden  where  rot  two  old  green,  painted  figure-heads.  There 
live  Prunella,  Mityl,  Selysette,  and  their  tribe.  But  go  carefully 
to  South  End,  for  the  road  is  fugitive,  and  I  cannot  always  find 
it  myself.  I  think  I  find  it  only  on  the  days  when  I  am  not  too 
impure  in  heart. 

Wherever  flows  London  stone  the  slits  exist.  A  deep,  dark 
archway  out  of  Surrey  Street  dives  under  the  Norfolk  Hotel; 
follow  it,  go  down  Surrey  Steps,  and  you  shall  come  to  a  water- 
gate,  on  which  you  may  yet  lean  and  smell  the  tar  of  Henry  Fitz 
Alwyn's  barge.  Another  slit,  behind  the  Alexandra  Hotel,  will 
lead  you  through  Old  Barrack  Yard  (I  do  not  know  what  barrack) 
and  past  low,  industrial  cottages,  to  the  petrified  splendours  of 
Belgravia.  I  wish  I  knew  them  all,  for  I  discovered  yet  another 
last  week,  after  overlooking  it  for  over  sixteen  years.  It  is  called 
St  James's  Market,  and  leads  ofF  the  Haymarket,  towards  the 
neat  elegancies  of  Jermyn  Street.  That  does  not  sound  promising; 
yet,  lost  among  the  backs  of  warehouses  and  restaurants, 
there  stands  a  long,  low  house  coated  with  green  plaster;  it 
is  a  workshop,  but  some  sense  of  fitness  had  bidden  the 
workers  relieve  its  green  walls  with  claret  curtains.  I 
choose  to  be  sure  that  in  this  house  Axford  tried  to  imprison 
Hannah  Lightfoot,  until  the  fair  Quakeress  fled  to  her  Georgian 
lover. 

And  follow  the  green  spot  on  the  map,  on  the  borough  map, 
that  cares  so  much  for  the  borough,  so  little  for  the  town.  The 
borough  map  will  lead  you  to  green  fields  where  flourish  the 
sardine  tin  and  the  wild  hyacinth.  It  will  lead  you  to  a  church- 
yard, itself  buried  between  theatres  and  shops,  behind  St  Ann's, 
10 


PRELUDE 

Soho,  where  King  Theodore  of  Corsica  has  laid  his  insurgent 
bones.  It  will  lead  you  behind  the  solemnities  of  South  Paddington 
into  the  vast  churchyard  behind  the  little  Chapel  of  the  Ascension. 
This  is  open  to  you  all  day;  there  you  will  find  sparse  graves, 
vast  lawns  and,  under  the  trees,  friendly  seats  where  you  may 
dream  of  death,  or,  if  you  prefer,  of  loves  that  will  companion 
you  to  that  bourne. 


II 


II 

PLAYGROUNDS 


CHAPTER  II 

PLAYGROUNDS 

IT  is  strange  that  the  theatre  should  matter  in  a  nation  such  as 
ours,  which  has  gained  a  reputation  for  liberalism  and  tolerance, 
being  tolerant  because  it  cared  for  nothing,  and  liberal  because  it 
understood  little.  The  vogue  of  the  theatre  reflects  the  character 
of  urban  England,  which  is  as  frivolous  as  that  of  urban  Italy  is 
dour;  because  it  is  the  symbol  of  pleasure,  easily  attained  and 
still  more  easily  digested,  it  can  always  find  room  in  the  newspaper, 
where  the  affairs  of  the  nation  flicker  and  the  claims  of  art  are 
unmet.  For  let  there  be  no  confusion:  art  and  the  theatre  are 
not  the  same  thing;  almost  one  might  say  that  if  a  play  possesses 
artistic  quality  it  holds  a  passport  to  eternity,  with  this  difference, 
that  many  things  lost  in  eternity  are  remembered.  A  little  more 
may  be  said  of  this  further  on. 

London  has  always  been  a  city  of  theatres,  perhaps  because 
we  have,  for  many  centuries,  laboured  under  the  Puritan  tradition : 
its  bitterness  has  attached  to  the  theatre  a  glamour  foreign  to  it  in 
hotter  lands.  When  you  open  a  book  of  memoirs  by  an  Italian, 
a  German,  or  a  Russian,  you  may  be  sure  that  it  will  consist  in 
portraits  of  politicians,  biographies  of  cocottes,  stories  of  riots 
and  coronations,  but  if  at  Hatchards  you  peer  into  any  volume 
called  My  Life,  or  something  like  that,  you  will  almost  invariably 
discover  that  the  greater  part  of  the  author's  life  seems  to  have 
been  employed  in  meeting  Sir  Henry  Irving,  or  waiting  outside 
the  Adelphi  on  first  nights.  The  theatre,  you  see,  is  wicked  and 
winning;  the  most  august  of  the  augustine,  Messrs  Coutts  and 
Co.,  stamp  upon  their  cheques  their  old  sign :  '  At  the  "  Three 
Crowns  "  in  the  Strand,  next  door  to  the  Globe  Theatre,  A.D.  1692.' 
I  will  wager  those  three  crowns  that  no  bank  manager  would 
ever  think  of  advertising  on  his  cheques :  '  Next  door  to  West- 
minster Abbey.'  Why  this  should  be  is  not  entirely  explained 
by  the  Puritan  tradition,  and  it  is  still  less  explained  by  the  London 
theatres  themselves,  nearly  all  of  them,  the  meanest,  dirtiest, 

15 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

dingiest,  fustiest,  frowstiest  edifices  in  the  country.  This  is  true, 
whether  you  pass  from  Drury  Lane,  that  cave  of  winds,  to 
4  behind,'  at  the  Kingsway,  where  the  oldest  rabbit  would  get 
lost.  Indeed,  our  theatres  must  have  been  influenced  by  the 
Puritan  tradition,  for  everything  has  been  done  to  hide  their 
addresses  in  the  papers,  to  make  their  doors  invisible,  their  seating 
suitable  for  a  Christian  martyr.  There  is  not  in  London  a  pre- 
Boer  War  theatre  the  pit  of  which  is  not  summed  up  by  Rutland 
Harrington's  song:  *  You  bark  your  shins,  you  bang  your  head, 
your  knees  are  up  to  your  nose  in  bed  .  .  .'  and  so  on.  They  are 
so  arranged  that  people  delicately  place  their  feet  in  the  small 
of  your  back,  so  that  nobody  can  enter  the  middle  of  a  row  without 
disturbing  it,  or  leave  it  without  infuriating  it;  as  for  the  rakes, 
in  spite  of  the  matinee  hat,  I  suspect  that  they  have  been  planned 
to  encourage  expensive  transfers.  Of  course,  the  worst  theatres 
are  those  which  are  known  as  the  '  £ood  old  '  ones.  There  is  no 
such  thing  as  good  old.  There  is  nothing  but  bad  old,  and  the 
theatre  is  an  example.  It  must  have  been  that  heathen  god,  Good 
Old,  invented  Covent  Garden.  Good  Old  got  it  up  in  red  and 
gold  (Good  Old  would) ;  Good  Old  planned  the  slips,  which  on  one 
side  let  you  hear  all  the  strings  and  on  the  other  all  the  brass. 
Good  Old  says  it  is  cheap  for  half  a  crown.  Good  Old  planned 
Drury  Lane  and  laid  it  down  where  no  buses  pass.  And,  no 
doubt,  Good  Old  handed  over  what  was  then  Her  Majesty's 
Theatre  to  Shakespeare  as  dramatised  by  Beerbohm  Tree. 

Some  of  the  old  London  theatres,  it  is  true,  are  a  little  less 
repulsive  because  they  are  not  quite  so  large.  Thus,  the  Hay- 
market,  the  Royalty,  and  in  a  queer,  insidious  way  old  Sadler's 
Wells.  Sadler's  Wells  has  gone;  there  to-day  upon  the  film 
cowboys  race  and  rescue,  and  negroid  heroines  register  their 
emotions,  but  not  long  ago  it  was  one  of  the  few  pleasant  places 
Good  Old  had  bequeathed  us,  with  its  hemicycle  of  plush-backed 
stalls,  its  little  boxes  lined  with  an  inch  of  plush  and  half  an  inch 
of  dirt,  its  heavy  red  hangings,  favourable  to  lovers,  its  preposterous 
plays  of  love,  gold,  faith,  patriotism,  and  banana  falls.  You  see, 
at  Sadler's  Wells,  Good  Old  dated  back  to  about  1780,  while  at 
16 


PLAYGROUNDS 

most  of  our  theatres  he  has  brought  himself  up  to  date,  say  to  1860, 
and  has  grown  respectable;  it  has  not  agreed  with  him.  When 
we  consider  the  few  new  theatres  that  have  been  built,  such  as 
the  Scala,  the  Little  Theatre,  the  Ambassadors,  we  are  sure 
that  the  old  cannot  be  brought  up  to  date.  Like  most  old  insti- 
tutions, the  English  theatre  can  be  reformed  only  by  dynamite. 

As  in  many  human  things,  architecture  is  at  fault.  The 
playhouse  is  evolved  from  the  Roman  circus.  But  the  circus 
offered  a  performance  without  scenery,  which  could  be  seen  from 
all  sides.  When  scenery  came,  it  grew  impossible  to  show  the 
play  except  from  one  side,  so  as  not  to  give  away  the  mystery; 
thus  we  obtained  the  semi-circular  auditorium,  which  would  be 
quite  satisfactory  if  it  did  not  result  in  a  perpetually  partial  view 
for  one  half  of  the  audience.  The  old  play  was  mainly  pantomimic ; 
when  the  play  grew  more  articulate  it  became  impossible  to  hear 
the  words  very  far,  and  as  the  theatre  could  not  spread  outwards 
it  spread  upwards.  Then  chaos  came,  for  rakes  had  to  be  so 
arranged  as  to  enable  people  to  see,  and  yet  packed  close  under 
another  tier.  The  result  is  sardines. 

Indeed,  when  we  consider  what  it  labours  against,  it  is  remark- 
able that  the  theatre  should  be  so  healthy.  Every  year,  well  over 
half  the  plays  that  are  put  on  enjoy  less  than  six  weeks'  run,  and 
if  it  were  not  notorious  that  bankruptcy  is  a  profitable  trade  one 
would  wonder  how  managers  live.  The  managers  seem  to  have 
done  everything  to  achieve  financial  suicide.  Especially  during 
the  last  twenty  years ;  notably  stimulated  by  Mr  Charles  Frohman 
and  Mr  George  Edwardes,  they  have  indulged  in  an  endless 
competition  in  expensive  staging.  It  grew  quite  common  for  a 
play  to  cost  £5000  to  stage,  and  much  more  was  spent  sometimes. 
Now,  that  large  sum  was  risked,  not  invested,  and  so  the  unfortunate 
manager  had  to  pay  his  backers  a  heavy  toll.  I  am  sure  he  was 
entirely  wrong,  for  audiences  prefer  plays  to  scenery,  and  Mr 
Cochran,  one  of  the  few  managers  who  remembers  that  once 
upon  a  time  he  was  a  public,  has  proved  this  by  staging  a  successful 
revue  for  about  £150.  Do  not  believe  that  I  am  a  highbrow; 
I  do  not  suggest  that  A  Little  Bit  of  Fluff  should  be  staged  without 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

scenery,  but  with  curtains  (though  there  is  a  lot  in  curtains,  if 
discreetly  drawn),  but  I  do  suggest  that  the  more  elaborate  the 
scenery,  the  more  the  play  is  overlooked.  Perhaps  that  is  what 
the  managers  desire,  and  judging  from  the  condition  of  modern 
drama,  •  perhaps  they  are  right.  But  I  attribute  to  the  managers 
no  such  prorundities  of  psychology.  Rather  would  I  say  that 
they  know  what  the  public  wants,  and  one  thing  they  know  well : 
the  public  wants  certain  actors  and  wants  them  passionately. 

I  shall  never  forget  a  certain  performance  of  King  Henry  V. 
There  entered  a  man  in  silver  armour,  his  visor  down,  and  a 
gasping  female  by  my  side  said:  'That's  Lewis  Waller.'  And 
the  worst  of  it  is  that  she  was  right,  and  that  I  knew  she  was  right. 
Visor  or  no  visor,  I  too  knew  it  was  Lewis  Waller;  it  was  Lewis 
Waller,  slamming  and  banging  British  drama  as  none  better 
could  than  he,  by  insisting,  in  his  silver  armour,  on  being  always 
Waller,  never  Henry  V.  They  are  all  like  that:  Mr  Gerald 
du  Maurier  may  dress  himself  up  as  a  policeman,  or  swathe  his 
neck  in  a  choker,  or  get  into  evening  clothes  and  pretend  to  be  a 
burglar,  but  thick  over  those  artifices  lies  always  the  charming 
du  Maurier  trail.  He  is  loved  for  that,  just  as  Beerbohm  Tree 
was  loved  for  the  confectionery  of  his  voice  and  the  circular 
movement  of  his  hand,  as  Mr  Hawtrey  is  loved  for  his  sober 
cynicism,  and  Miss  Doris  Keane  for  ...  I  don't  know  exactly 
what.  Whatever  actors  are  loved  for,  it  is  always  for  being  them- 
selves and  never  for  being  their  parts;  whether,  like  Miss  Lilian 
Braithwaite,  they  have  cast  themselves  for  the  lilies  and  languors 
of  virtue,  or,  like  Miss  Dorothy  Minto,  for  the  roses  and  raptures 
of  vice,  to  those  selections  they  must  cleave,  or  they  shall  be  loved 
no  more.  But  if  they  do  cleave  to  these  selves  of  theirs,  then  shall 
they  attain  fame,  and  the  public  will  not  say:  '  Have  you  been  to 
Hamlet  ? '  but  '  Have  you  seen  Martin  Harvey  ? '  And  this 
worship  shapes  yet  another  stone  to  hurl  at  the  English  theatre, 
namely,  fantastic  salaries,  varying  between  £100  and  £300  a  week. 
Call  me  a  Bolshevik  if  you  like,  but  I  say  no  man  is  worth  £300 
a  week;  nobody  knows  this  when  the  man  is  alive,  but  everybody 
does  the  day  after  he  is  dead.  This  would  not  matter  if  it  did 
18 


PLAYGROUNDS 

not  make  the  theatre  so  expensive  to  run,  therefore  the  prices  of 
the  seats  so  high  that  only  those  who  can  afford  it  sit  in  them. 
The  richer  the  staging,  the  poorer  the  play;  the  dearer  the  seat, 
the  greater  its  attraction  to  the  people  who  know  '  the  price  of 
everything  and  the  value  of  nothing.'  For  long  purses  are  made 
of  sows'  ears. 

I  wonder  if  something  could  be  done  for  the  theatre. 
Supposing  it  were  built  like  the  Scala,  so  that  nobody  sat  at 
the  sides,  so  that  everybody  might  see  the  play  instead  of 
hats,  so  that  one  might  have  a  fit  in  the  stalls  and  be  removed 
without  causing  too  much  trouble  (you  see,  I  think  of  everything), 
so  that  the  people  at  the  top  were  not  seated  so  high  as  to  observe 
mainly  the  actors'  upper  skulls.  Supposing  a  theatre  like  the 
Munich  Kammerspiele,  which  holds  five  hundred,  were  to  be 
built.  Supposing,  like  that  one,  it  had  but  one  balcony;  supposing 
it  were  cheap  to  light;  supposing,  too,  that  it  had  no  programme 
sellers,  but  delivered  programmes  at  the  doors  from  a  penny-in- 
the-slot  machine;  supposing  it  had  no  cloak-room  attendants, 
but  hooks  with  a  number  and  a  padlock;  supposing  it  had  no  ... 
I  forget  the  name  of  the  attendant,  something  like  pew-opener, 
and  that  the  seats  were  not  numbered  from  A. 2  6  to  M-34  in  the 
stalls,  not  numbered  at  all  in  the  pit,  and  re-numbered  again  in 
the  upper  circle;  supposing  the  seats  were  just  numbered  I,  2, 
3,  so  that  one  could  find  them;  supposing  we  paid  actors  for 
rehearsals  and  engaged  them  for  a  certain  term;  supposing  all 
this,  would  the  public  be  pleased  ?  I  wonder!  I  wonder  whether 
the  public  would  like  paying  less  for  its  seats.  If  stalls  did  not 
cost  IDS.  6d.,  would  it  trust  the  play  ?  It  certainly  does  not  trust 
the  doctor  who  charges  less  than  los.  6d.  And  yet,  once  upon 
a  time,  the  theatre  was  cheap.  When,  sixty  years  ago,  Ben 
Webster  was  producing  at  the  Adelphi,  a  stall  cost  55.,  and  Mr 
Webster  offered  amphitheatre  stalls  *  with  elbows  and  cushions, 
secured  the  whole  evening  '  for  is. 

Yes,  a  good  deal  might  be  done  like  this.  A  good  deal  might 
be  done  by  the  Lord  Chamberlain  and  the  London  County  Council, 
if  only  they  would  cease  to  devote  all  their  thoughts  to  exits  from 

19 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

the  theatre.  (On  consideration,  this  may  be  well  advised.)  They 
might  allow  smoking,  and  best  of  all,  they  might  allow  everything, 
suspend  all  censorship,  and  be  assured  that  the  plays  which  are 
called  objectionable  would  not  be  staged.  I  do  not  mean  that 
there  is  no  demand  for  objectionable  plays;  there  is;  indeed,  we 
nearly  all  of  us  like  objectionable  plays,  but  the  Puritans  can  trust 
our  Puritan  feeling,  which  makes  it  impossible  for  us  to  enjoy 
objectionable  plays  because  we  dare  not  be  seen  enjoying  them 
by  other  people  who  are  also  enjoying  them.  Ahl  if  you  could 
go  to  the  play  masked  it  would  be  different. 

What  is  wrong  with  the  drama  is  that  it  does  not  hold  an 
idea  to  the  square  act;  is  it  worth  saving  ?  For  it  may  truly  be 
said  that  the  only  fault  the  public  finds  in  a  stupid  play  is  that  it 
1  is  not  stupid  enough.  You  do  not  believe  me.  Let  us  look  at 
the  list  of  plays  in  to-day's  paper.  To-day  there  are  open  thirty- 
six  metropolitan  theatres,  including  some  we  can  leave  out, 
Maskelyne's,  Drury  Lane  (Opera),  the  Philharmonic.  Of  the 
remaining  thirty-three,  musical  comedy  occupies  six  stages.  Say 
no  more  about  that.  If  it  were  not  for  the  lips  that  sing,  our 
attention  would  be  concentrated  on  English  music.  Revue  rages 
at  five  theatres.  This  leaves  twenty-two  plays  running.  Among 
them  are  two  spy  plays,  two  comic  war  plays,  a  mystical  melodrama, 
four  farces;  the  rest  consists  in  plays  made  by  hands  unassisted 
by  heads,  plays  that  the  next  generation  may  make  by  machinery. 
The  groans  of  old  age  are  heard  as  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  rigs  The 
Freaks  upon  their  legs,  as  Mr  Somerset  Maughan  presents  Love 
in  a  Cottage.  And  Dear  Brutus  is  the  twinkling  star  that  makes 
darker  the  Thalian  night. 

In  hardly  one  of  these  plays  is  there  a  single  moment  of 
intellectual  distinction.  I  do  not  mean  that  I  ask  those  twenty- 
two  stages  to  make  up  the  night's  programme  of  King  Lear, 
Ghosts,  Les  Trots  Filles  de  Monsieur  Dupont,  the  Sunken  Bell,  The 
Knight  of  the  Burning  Pestle,  but  I  do  think  that  their  coalition 
might  give  us  more  than  Dear  Brutus.  There  should  be  plenty 
of  room  for  true  comedy  of  the  type  of  The  Admirable  Crichton, 
Mrs  Gorringe's  Necklace,  John  Bull's  Other  Island,  The  Cassilis 

20 


PLAYGROUNDS 

Engagement,  Chains,  comedy  with  ideas.  There  should  be  room 
for  The  Shewing-up  of  Blanco  Posnett,  The  Playboy  of  the  Western 
World  and  other  solid  plays.  But  one  condition  is  that  we  should 
pay  for  plays,  not  players.  We  do  not.  If  you  want  evidence 
consider  the  following  advertisement  of  When  Knights  were  Bold 
(a  really  amusing  play): — 


WHEN  KNIGHTS  WERE  BOLD. 


BROMLEY 
CHALLENOR 


MARJORIE 
BELLAIRS 


*  Bromley   Challenor   has   a   personality   and 

fun  of  his  own.' — Times. 
'An    individual    style    of   his    own/ — Daily 

Telegraph. 
'  A  manner  quite  his  own.' — The  Queen. 

*  Nothing   funnier   than    the   second   act.' — 

Daily  Telegraph. 

*  His  fun  is  infectious/ — Daily  Graphic. 

*  Keeps  his  audience  in  convulsions/ — Star. 
'  Had      a      triumphant      reception/ — Daily 

Chronicle. 

'  Bromley  Challenor  extracts  every  spark  of 
fun/ — J.  T.  GREIN,  Sunday  Times. 

*  The  play  went  more  gloriously  than  ever/ 

— Referee. 

'  Miss  Marjorie  Bellairs  is  a  charming  actress 
with  a  singularly  sweet  voice/ — Era. 


Ten  press  quotations.  Two  refer  to  the  play;  one  may  refer  to 
play  or  to  actor;  seven  refer  to  the  actor  only.  (The  playwright 
is  not  mentioned,  but  never  mind).  This  does  not  mean  that  the 
newspapers  confined  their  notices  to  Mr  Bromley  Challenor,  but 
it  does  mean  that  the  management  selected  for  quotation  only 
the  phrases  which  refer  to  the  actor,  because  that  is  what  the 
public  wants,  and  what  it  gets  for  the  hastening  of  its  mental 
decay. 

What  is  wrong  with  the  theatre  is,  to  a  certain  extent,  right 

21 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

with  the  music-hall,  and  this  for  two  reasons:  we  have  to  deal 
with  a  different  kind  of  playgoer,  and  the  excessive  valuation  of  the 
actor  is  sharply  limited  by  the  worth  of  his  songs.  I  have  seen 
Ernie  Mayne,  Ella  Shields,  and  others  rouse  the  house  with  one 
song  and  half-fail  with  another.  The  theatre-goer,  who,  on  the 
whole,  is  not  a  music-hall-goer,  is  usually  either  in  a  smug  condition, 
or  over-conscious  of  his  digestive  process.  Nearly  all  the  pit 
and  upper  circle,  and  the  bulk  of  the  dress  circle,  feel  that  they 
are  indulging  in  a  respectable  spree.  Leaving  aside  the  one  who, 
in  the  newspapers,  signs  his  letters  as  *  Old  Playgoer  '  (generally 
an  old  fool),  or  '  Old  Firstnighter,'  probably  an  old  lunatic  (because 
the  first  night  is  the  worst  night),  the  cheaper  seats  in  a  theatre 
are  tenanted  mainly  by  people  in  a  stupefied  state  of  admiration. 
They  have  escaped  for  a  few  hours  from  the  dug-outs  of  respect- 
ability; their  families  have  not  long  emerged  from  the  tradition 
that  the  theatre  is  a  place  of  evil  repute;  some  even  believe  that 
they  are  improving  their  minds,  which  is  touching,  whatever  the 
condition  of  their  minds.  They  file  their  programmes.  They 
loudly  proclaim  to  their  friends  that  they  '  ought '  to  go  and  see 
such  and  such  a  play.  Perhaps  they  go  because  they  ought  to. 
Perhaps  they  go  to  dream  dreams;  no  doubt  nightmares  do  not 
disappoint  them.  The  stalls  are  not  in  search  of  virtue  tempered 
with  a  little  vice;  most  of  their  patrons  are  confessedly  in  search 
of  vice  neat.  They  never  get  it.  And  if  this  vice,  invisible  to 
anybody  who  is  not  a  bishop  or  the  editor  of  a  Sunday  paper,  is 
necessary  to  their  health,  it  is  because  they  visit  the  theatre  in  a 
state  of  advanced  repletion,  because  they  are  people  who  manage 
to  be  replete  in  the  middle  of  a  European  war;  such  is  their 
nature.  No  wonder,  then,  that  the  cold  suet  of  the  drama  should 
have  so  securely  become  wrapped  in  the  wet  dish-cloth  of  the 
playgoer.  Thus,  it  may  be  true  to  say  that  the  playgoer  gets  the 
plays  he  deserves.  The  music-hall-goer  is  different. 

If  it  is  true  that  many  go  to  the  theatre  when  they  have  eaten 
too  much,  it  is,  to  a  certain  extent,  true  that  many  go  to  the  music- 
hall  when  they  have  drunk  too  much,  which,  if  I  must  choose, 
is  less  repulsive.  They  are  frankly  out  for  a  rag;  they  want  to 
22 


PLAYGROUNDS 

laugh,  and  I  had  rather  they  guffawed  than  drowsed.  You  can't 
drowse  in  a  music-hall:  from  the  moment  when  the  conductor, 
in  his  elaborately  luxurious  and  irremediably  faulty  dress  suit, 
addresses  his  first  and  infinitely  disabused  bow  to  the  audience, 
to  the  time  when  he  calls  upon  the  band  to  produce  the  smallest 
possible  scrap  of  *  God  Save  the  King,'  and  hurries  out  loyalty 
on  the  wings  of  ragtime,  there  is  no  flagging.  It  is  not  only  that 
red-nosed  comedian  and  eccentric  comedienne,  American  dancer, 
or  sketch  got  up  regardless,  tread  upon  each  other's  heels;  the 
main  thing  is  the  band,  the  harsh,  rapid  band,  that  never  stops, 
that  plays  anything,  providing  it  is  the  thing  of  the  day,  with  all 
the  regularity  and  indifference  of  the  typewriter.  From  it  gush 
patriotism,  comedy  or  sentiment,  and  all  three  burst  forth  with 
their  full  headline  value.  There  is  no  tickling  of  big  drums; 
when  the  drum  is  banged  you  know  it;  nor  is  there  measure  in 
the  sigh  of  the  oboe,  for  the  music-hall  paints  not  in  wash- 
greens  and  grays;  scarlet,  black,  white,  and  electric-blue  are 
its  gamut. 

Nothing  else  would  satisfy  the  audience  that  every  music-1 
hall  comedian  must  encounter  every  night.  It  is  a  mixed  audience. 
There  are  old  stagers  who  sit  in  the  same  seat  every  Saturday 
night,  without  looking  at  the  programme,  and  this  differentiates 
them  from  the  playgoer :  they  are  bound  for  a  playground.  There 
are  the  discriminating  who  follow  the  star,  so  long  as  the  star's 
songs  refrain  from  appealing  to  what  is  described  as  their  better 
feelings;  there  are  the  very  young  in  search  of  excitement,  and 
determined  to  get  it;  there  are  the  slightly  older,  who  come  in 
pairs,  and  do  nothing  to  conceal  the  fact.  (Of  late  years,  many 
of  these  have  been  lost  to  the  music-halls  and  have  taken  to  the 
cinemas  because  they  are  darker.)  But  one  thing  unites  them 
all:  they  have  come  here  to  be  amused,  amused  at  once,  amused 
all  the  time;  they  are  not  ready  to  make  allowances;  if  an  old 
song  is  a  good  song,  it  is  a  good  song,  but  if  it  is  not  a  good  song 
the  seasoned  music-hall-goer  will  know  it  at  once.  I  have  heard 
him  turn  to  his  neighbour  and  say:  *  It's  all  up.  She  won't  get 
across.'  Getting  across  the  footlights  is  not,  in  a  music-hall,  the 

23 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

same  thing  as  getting  across  in  a  theatre.  The  music-hall  per- 
former has  no  scenery  to  help  him,  in  this  sense,  that  the  properties 
are  well  known  to  the  audience.  I  have  seen  at  least  twenty  turns 
at  the  Shepherd's  Bush  Empire  in  front  of  a  drop-curtain  which 
I  swear  is  Croydon  High  Street.  The  words  of  the  song  are,  as 
a  rule,  difficult  to  sing.  Often,  as  in  the  case  of  George  Robey, 
the  costume  is  stereotyped  and  never  varies.  Thus  the  music- 
hall  performer,  having  not  the  scenery  of  Harry  Hope,  or  the 
knee-breeches  of  Malvolio,  can  rely  on  nothing  but  himself.  He 
comes  naked  into  an  entirely  cold  world.  His  situation  is  ideally 
expressed  by  the  old  cartoon  of  the  impresario,  his  foot  bound  up 
to  show  that  he  has  gout.  Before  him  stands  the  dingy  figure  of 
a  little  performer.  This  is  their  dialogue : — 

Impresario :    '  What's  your  line  ? ' 

Performer:    'Comedian.' 

Impresario:   'Well!  get  on  with  it!     Make  me  laugh.' 

If  within  one  minute  of  his  appearance  the  performer  has  not 
got  his  laugh  he  will  probably  not  get  it  at  all.  If  he  is  famous, 
and  if  his  turn  is  not  too  bad,  nothing  worse  will  happen  than  the 
administration  of  the  frozen  lemon.  It  is  rather  tragic,  feeling 
the  lemon  come.  You  feel  the  audience  leap  up  towards  the 
performer,  for  it  is  always  ready  to  give  him  his  chance,  even  if 
he  is  unknown;  then,  in  a  minute  or  so,  you  feel  the  audience 
drop  away  from  him;  you  are  aware  that  he  is  not  being  listened 
to,  for  people  begin  to  talk,  to  flutter  with  their  programmes,  and 
perhaps  some  one  may  hum  an  irrelevant  air.  The  wretched 
performer  knows  it.  If  you  are  sitting  in  the  first  row  of  the 
stalls  you  see  anxiety  come  over  his  face.  He  begins  to  shout  or 
to  dance  rather  wildly;  he  knows  that  he  is  not  getting  across; 
he  tries  to  attract  attention  as  a  cockatoo  if  he  cannot  do  so  as  an 
eagle.  Then  some  one  laughs  derisively,  and  there  is  something 
hideous  in  that  laughter;  it  makes  one  think  of  the  thumb-down 
attitude  in  the  Roman  circus.  The  curtain  drops  in  the  middle 
of  something  that  is  half  hum  and  half  silence.  That  is  the  lemon. 
24 


PLAYGROUNDS 

It  is  only  in  extreme  cases  that  the  audience  manifests  dis- 
approval. Indeed,  it  is  an  audience  full  of  good-natured  contempt, 
and  if  the  lemon  is  taken  it  willingly  passes  on  to  the  next  turn ; 
as  a  rule,  the  lemon  is  taken  by  the  management,  who  ring  down 
the  curtain  on  the  first  song  and  do  not  let  the  performer  come 
on  again.  But  if  the  performer  does  come  on  again,  and  strives 
to  recapture  lost  ground,  the  audience  will  give  him  thirty  seconds 
to  do  it;  if  he  fails,  the  hum  grows  angry  as  that  of  a  swarm  of 
bees.  There  is  more  derisive  laughter;  a  few  yells  come  from 
the  gallery;  a  general  uproar  develops  from  the  hum.  You 
discern  cries :  *  I  want  to  go  'ome '  .  .  .  '  Take  me  back  to  mother.' 
.  .  .  Opponents  reply  as  loudly:  'Shut  up!  chuck  him  out!' 
But  the  voices  resume  in  more  and  more  sepulchral  tones:  '  I 
want  to  go  'ome,'  while  others  join  the  rag  for  the  rag's  sake,  and 
some  stentor  high  above  roars:  '  Shut  yer  face,  dear,  I  see  yer 
Christmas  dinner.'  And  then  everybody  cries:  *  Chuck  him  out! 
while  the  performer  sings  louder  and  louder,  and  the  band  makes 
still  more  desperate  efforts  to  drown  his  song.  Then  a  large  portion 
of  the  audience  rise  to  their  feet  and  bellow  enmity  until  the 
curtain  goes  down.  That  is  the  scarlet  bird,  and  I  have  not  often 
seen  it  on  the  wing. 

No,  there  is  no  mercy  in  the  music-hall  audience.  For  it  is  an 
honest  audience,  and  is,  therefore,  capable  of  every  brutality. 
Also,  everybody  has  paid  for  his  seat.  Nobody  there  can  afford 
to  waste  that  small  payment.  They  must  get  their  money's 
worth.  They  know  exactly  what  they  want;  they  have 
been  wanting  it  ever  since  the  Middle  Ages,  and,  on  the  whole, 
have  been  getting  it.  They  want  rough  and  obvious  jokes  told 
in  a  subtle  and  intelligent  way;  they  want  to  see  the  performer 
break  plates  or  sit  on  the  butter,  but  he  must  do  it  in  a  debonair 
style;  they  want  songs  of  which  they  know  the  tune  by  the  time 
the  second  couplet  is  reached,  favourite  songs  of  which  they  can 
bellow  the  choruses  while  the  triumphant  performer  whispers  it; 
above  all,  they  want  their  traditional  jokes.  Cheese,  lodgers, 
mothers-in-law,  twins,  meeting  the  missus  at  3  a.m.,  alcoholic 
excess,  one  or  more  of  these  must  be  introduced  to  make  a 

L.M.  C  25 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

successful  song.  It  does  not  matter  who  you  are,  whether  the  great 
McDermott,  Dan  Leno,  or  R.  G.  Knowles,  you  must  tie  your 
little  bark  to  the  great  ship  of  the  English  music-hall  tradition. 
No  famous  song  has  become  famous  unless  a  portion  of  it  at 
least  dealt  with  one  of  these  subjects:  '  Champagne  Charlie/ 
*  I'm  following  in  father's  footsteps,'  '  The  Girl,  the  Woman,  and 
the  Widow,'  are  clear  evidences  of  this.  Perhaps  that  is  why 
some  delicate  artists,  such  as  Maidie  Scott  and  Wish  Wynne, 
have  never  quite  *  got  there.'  Maidie  Scott  is  the  most  finished 
product  on  the  music-halls  of  to-day.  As  soon  as  she  comes  on, 
her  quick,  schoolgirl  walk,  her  red  hair,  her  distrait  eyes,  and  the 
voice  which  she  knows  so  amazingly  how  to  keep  down  to  a  minor 
key,  cut  her  right  out  of  the  stage.  When  Maidie  Scott  sings 
'  Amen,'  or  '  Father's  got  the  sack  from  the  water- works  '  (all 
along  of  his  cherry  briar  pipe,  because  they  were  afraid  he'd  set 
the  water- works  on  fire),  and  still  more  when  she  sings,  '  I'm 
glad  I  took  my  mother's  advice,'  one  has  a  sense  of  extraordinary 
detachment.  She  is  aloof,  alone.  She  is  so  entirely  under  restraint; 
knows  so  well  how,  at  last,  to  let  her  voice  swell  and  underline 
her  point;  she  knows  so  well  how  not  to  waste  during  a  song  the 
power  of  her  splendid  blue  eyes,  but  to  reserve  them  for  that  final 
point.  Thus  she  should  wield  astonishing  power,  yet  does  not 
quite;  she  lacks  grossness;  like  Wish  Wynne,  her  art  is  a  little 
too  delicate  to  get  across.  The  audience  like  her,  they  like  Wish 
Wynne  singing  *  Oo!  er!  '  and  miserably  dragging  her  little 
tin  trunk,  but  never  for  either  do  they  rise  and  roar  as  they  do  for 
Marie  Lloyd. 

It  is  true  that  Marie  Lloyd  takes  us  into  another  world,  that  of 
the  comfortable  public-house,  with  plenty  of  lights  and  red  plush; 
to  the  publican's  dog-cart  off  to  the  Derby;  to  the  large  birthday 
party,  enlivened  by  plenty  of  sherry  wine.  In  Marie  Lloyd's 
world  everything  is  fat,  healthy,  round,  jolly,  bouncing;  when 
she  keeps  the  old  man's  trousers  to  remember  him  by  after  he's 
gone,  she  defines  the  human  quality  of  her  sentiment:  she  can 
do  nothing  false  and  artificial,  such  as  pressing  his  nuptial  button- 
hole. Marie  Lloyd  is  a  woman  before  she  is  an  actress,  and  in 
26 


PLAYGROUNDS 

this  lies  her  strength.  When  she  advises  the  audience  to  '  'Ave 
a  little  bit  of  what  yer  fancy  (if  you  fancy  it,  if  you  fancy  it),  'Ave  a 
little  bit  of  what  yer  fancy,  I  say  it  does  yer  good/  Marie  Lloyd 
is  expressing  the  eternal  claim  of  the  flesh  against  the  spirit,  which 
has  been  rediscovered  a  great  many  times  since  Epicurus.  She 
survives  a  great  generation;  there  is  nobody  to-day  fit  to  wear 
her  pleasantly-little  shoes. 

There  is  nobody,  because  the  spirit  of  the  music-hall  is 
changing,  and  women,  who  are  more  adaptable  than  men,  are 
feeling  it  first.  An  awful  thing  is  happening  to  most  of  the  young 
women  on  the  halls;  they  are  becoming  refined.  Louie  and 
Toots  Pounds,  Ella  Retford,  Clarice  Mayne,  Ella  Shields,  have 
nothing  of  the  Marie  Lloyd  tradition;  they  are  almost  creatures 
of  the  drawing-room.  Even  Beattie  and  Babs,  though  Babs 
does  what  she  can  with  stockings  that  nothing  will  ever  keep  up, 
never  seem  to  experience  the  thick  joy  of  being  alive  that  Marie 
Lloyd  conveys  in  one  slow,  sidelong  raising  of  her  immortal 
eyelid.  There  is,  perhaps,  a  white  hope,  Daisy  Wood,  but  one 
cannot  be  sure.  They  sing  well,  these  young  women,  they  dance 
well ;  they  do  it  too  well ;  women  of  the  older  tradition,  such  as 
Victoria  Monks  and  Nellie  Wallace  are  still  themselves:  they 
do  not  do  it  so  well,  but  they  do  it.  These  are  not  trained,  like 
the  young  women,  but  they  have  grown  up  and  discovered  them- 
selves; they  do  not  act  joy  or  distress:  they  cut  joy  or  distress 
out  of  common  life  and  lay  it  down  on  the  bare  planks.  All  that 
is  going,  for  the  music-hall  is  growing  refined. 

Let  me  dispel  a  possible  misunderstanding.  When  I  say 
music-hall  I  do  not  mean  those  sinks  of  virtue,  the  Coliseum,  or 
the  Palladium,  the  Palace,  and  the  Hippodrome.  Those  are  royal 
theatres  of  varieties,  eminently  suited  for  long  skirts  and  acrobats, 
and  large  enough  for  elephants.  Two  of  them  can  safely  be 
handed  over  to  revue,  and  the  rest  is  silence.  I  have  seen  Mr 
George  Robey,  I  forget  whether  it  was  at  the  Palladium  or  the 
Coliseum,  and  the  place  was  so  broad,  and  so  deep,  and  so  high, 
that  his  eyebrows  looked  normal :  can  I  add  anything  to  the  horror 
of  this  picture  ?  The  only  comedian  who  ever  seemed  to  me  a 

27 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

success  in  those  barns  was  Little  Tich,  as  little  Miss  Turpentine, 
because  they  made  him  still  smaller,  which  heightened  his  effect. 
But  those  halls  pay  large  salaries,  and  I  suppose  they  will  go  on. 
Indeed,  I  fear  that  they  are  gaining  ground  because  we  are  daily 
sinking  deeper  in  the  Joseph  Lyons  civilisation,  where  everything 
must  be  cheap,  gilt,  and  enormous.  The  old  halls,  the  Holborn, 
the  Metropolitan,  the  Bedford,  Collins's,  will  not  last  long; 
already  many  halls  have  been  seized,  the  Tivoli  and  the  Canterbury 
by  cinemas,  the  Shepherd's  Bush,  I  think  the  Paragon,  Mile  End, and 
certainly  the  Shoreditch  Empire  by  Sir  Oswald  Stoll.  We  have  to 
count  with  Sir  Oswald  Stoll.  Together  with  Sir  Joseph  Lyons,  he  has 
done  more  to  drive  out  Merrie  England  than  the  dourest  champion 
of  methodism.  You  can  go  to  his  music-halls,  or  to  the 
Palladium,  which  is  not  a  Stoll  hall,  but  a  stollomorphe,  and  nothing 
will  offend  your  good  taste.  During  the  last  dozen  years  Sir  Oswald 
Stoll  has  been  engaged  in  a  continuous  and  painfully  successful 
campaign  to  raise  the  English  music-hall;  he  has  almost  succeeded 
in  elevating  it.  True,  in  his  halls  appear  all  those  men  who  carry 
on  the  old  tradition  and  glorify  the  flesh:  George  Robey,  Sam 
Stern,  Ernie  Mayne,  Sam  Mayo,  who  sing  the  crude  joy  of 
poor  life,  which  is  found  in  drunken  sprees  and  conjugal  mis- 
understandings, but  which  yet  is  true  life.  Little  by  little  their 
songs  grow  less  broad.  Sam  Mayo  would  not,  at  a  Stoll  hall, 
sing  the  ditty  which  used  to  delight  the  old  Middlesex:  '  Ching 
chang,  wing  wang,  bing,  bang,  boo,'  nor  would  Dutch  Daly 
sing  about  the  larks  in  May.  Our  old  comedians  are  limiting 
their  humours,  discolouring  their  noses,  rolling  their  umbrellas. 
The  young  ladies  in  the  audience,  and  their  young  gentlemen, 
modern  forms  of  the  donah  and  her  bloke,  would  feel  uncomfort- 
able if  too  crudely  reminded  that  love  is  something  more  than 
kisses  on  Brighton  Pier  under  a  pale  pink  sunshade.  The  old 
comedians  are  not  yet  dead,  and  Ernie  Mayne  can  still  sing : — 

4  Last  night  I  wandered  thro'  the  park, 
I  met  a  female  after  dark ; 
And,  feeling  faint  for  want  of  food, 
28 


PLAYGROUNDS 

I  fell  into  her  arms — how  rude! 

Just  then  she  murmured  "  Kiss  me, 

George!  "  her  face  I  chanced  to  see, 

The  girl  was  black,  with  nigger  lips; 

I  shouted,  "  Not  for  me!  " 

It's  my  meatless  day,  my  meatless  day, 

I'm  not  going  to  eat  any  sort  of  meat. 

Meat,  meat,  meat,  meat, 

I'm  thin  and  pale,  all  I've  put  away 

Is  two  roly-polies,  never  left  a  crumb, 

Three  currant  puddings  and  a  little  bit  of  plum, 

And  five  apple-dumplings  are  rolling  round  my  turn, 

'Cos  it's  my  meatless  day.' 

Yes,  Ernie  Mayne  may  still  sing  his  songs  of  Araby,  but 
little  by  little  he  is  being  borne  down  by  the  American  raconteur, 
whose  impropriety  is  always  in  the  best  of  taste,  by  the  ragtime 
dancer,  by  the  wandering  Italian  fiddler,  by  the  respectable 
eccentric  at  the  piano,  by  the  juggler,  by  the  refined  soprano, 
who  sings  *  God  send  you  back  to  me,  over  the  mighty  sea,'  or, 
'  There's  a  little  mother  always  yearning  for  the  ones  that  long 
to  roam.'  It's  all  getting  so  clean,  so  precious  pure.  The  old 
comedian  will  not  last  long.  He  that  was  once  a  bull  in  a  china- 
shop  will  soon  become  a  Stolled  ox. 

But  the  worst  may  yet  have  to  come.  A  new  demon  is  arising 
in  the  shape  of  the  cinema.  It  is  as  if  Merrie  England,  that  once 
lived  at  the  Surrey  Theatre  and  the  Globe,  and  was  driven  out 
when  the  middle  class  began  to  frequent  the  theatre  about  1870 
and  took  refuge  in  the  caves  of  harmony,  then  doubled  back  into 
the  Tivoli  and  the  Oxford  (fortunately  to  provide  what  the  late 
W.  T.  Stead  called  *  drivel  for  the  dregs  '),  were  being  pursued. 
Wherever  Merrie  England  goes,  it  seems  that,  as  Mark  Sheridan 
used  to  put  it,  '  the  villain  thtill  purthued  her,  purthued  her, 
purthued  her.'  When  the  music-hall  has  been  completely  improved 
I  wonder  whether  he  will  be  glad  to  have  '  purthued  her  '  to  such 
good  purpose.  Certainly,  in  the  cinemas,  little  is  left  of  the  old 

29 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

spirit  that  arose  as  one  drank  one's  beer  in  the  stalls  at  the  old 
Mogul,  for  the  cinema,  let  police  magistrates  say  what  they  like, 
bears  deep  upon  its  brow  the  brand  of  Abel. 

The  cinema,  like  most  new  and  virile  things,  has  split  opinion, 
and  has  collected  round  itself  more  unwise  friends  and  unthinking 
enemies  than  any  other  form  of  entertainment.  Few  people  like 
cinemas;  they  either  love  them  or  loathe  them,  while  a  few,  I 
suppose,  fall  into  my  section  of  feeling  and  hate  them  for  not 
being  better  than  they  are.  For  I  believe  in  the  cinema;  I  do  not 
think  that  the  cinema  will  do  away  with  the  theatre  and  the  novel, 
but  I  do  believe  that  it  is  destined  to  play  a  still  larger  part  in  the 
amusement  of  the  people.  Also,  I  believe  that  it  is  destined  to 
play  a  cleaner,  that  is,  a  more  artistic  part.  How  far  it  can  be 
brought,  I  do  not  know,  because  I  do  not  suppose  that  I  am  the 
one  chosen  by  nature  to  raise  it  high;  but  if  we  consider  films 
such  as  The  Birth  of  a  Nation,  or  Intolerance,  where  Mr  D.  W. 
Griffith,  a  man  of  some  slight  culture,  is  not  entirely  devoid  of 
taste,  and  certainly  bold  in  his  conceptions,  audacious  in  his 
execution,  we  cannot  wave  the  cinema  away  with  a  sneer  at  cowboy 
drama. 

The  cinema  began  with  cowboy  drama,  with  silly  pursuits  on 
horseback,  by  motor-car  and  by  train,  but  that  was  only  because, 
for  the  first  time,  movement  could  be  reproduced.  The  repro- 
duction of  movement  was  a  new  pleasure,  and  so  the  mob 
clamoured  for  it.  Carry  yourself  back  to  your  first  film  and,  be 
you  as  highbrowed  as  you  like,  you  will  not  deny  that  you  enjoyed 
those  febrile  races,  those  people  falling  out  of  windows,  crashing 
through  ceilings,  the  violent  opening  and  shutting  of  doors,  the 
rush  of  flying  crockery.  Then  you  grew  tired  of  it  and  began  to 
think  it  silly.  Well,  it  was  silly,  and  it  is  silly,  but  we  should 
remember  that  the  pioneers  of  the  cinema  were  Americans  of  the 
travelling-showman  type,  men  whose  fathers  had  exhibited  the 
camera  obscura  loved  of  our  fathers;  they  had  passed  through 
dissolving  views,  and  that  type  of  man  could  not  be  expected 
to  like,  and  therefore  to  put  forward,  a  dramatic  version  of  Paradise 
Lost.  Briefly,  the  cinema  was  put  forward  by  the  vulgar,  for  the 
30 


PLAYGROUNDS 

vulgar,  but  by  degrees,  as  the  mob  grew  weary  of  movement  for 
movement's  sake,  as  the  profits  increased,  new  men  such  as  Pathe", 
Urban,  Gaumont,  came  in.  They  were  commercial  men,  but 
not  vulgar  men,  men  who  realised  that  if  there  was  a  public  for 
the  novels  of  Mr  E.  F.  Benson  and  the  plays  of  Mr  Alfred  Sutro, 
there  must  be  a  cinema  public  for  something  less  lurid  than  the 
early  films.  By  degrees,  the  cinema  improved;  it  improved  in 
conceptions  when  subjects  such  as  Quo  Vadis  ?,  The  Walls  of 
Jericho,  Bella  Donna,  appeared  on  the  film;  yet  more  ambitious 
things  were  done  in  the  shape  of  Hamlet,  Julius  Caesar,  Justice, 
Intolerance,  and  many  more. 

The  film  improved,  too,  in  its  actual  execution.  The  earliest 
type  of  film  actor  was  scraped  up  from  the  East  Side  gutters  of 
New  York  and  the  graving-docks  of  Naples.  For  that  early 
cinema  you  needed  creatures  immensely  unrestrained,  yelling, 
dancing,  dirty  creatures,  not  at  all  the  people  who  could  have 
impersonated  what  the  old  lady  in  the  pit  called  the  '  married  life 
of  the  dear  Queen.'  And  as  the  subjects  changed  the  actors 
changed;  many  were  taken  from  the  stage;  some,  to  this  day, 
preserve  certain  characteristics  of  the  ordinary  human  being. 
It  is  not  quite  their  fault  if  they  do  not  preserve  them  all;  the 
cinema  has  had  time  to  make  a  tradition  of  its  own,  which  is  still 
represented  by  the  American  posters  we  see  upon  the  walls, 
where  the  heroines  have  enormous  eyes  and  more  teeth  than  Lulu 
Dentifrice;  where  the  young  men  have  straight  backs  to  their 
heads,  half  a  pound  of  white  meat  on  each  cheek,  a  rugged  brow, 
or  an  emetic  grin,  briefly,  the  most  brutal  type  of  Chicago  com- 
mercial rigged  out  in  the  dress  clothes  of  a  suicide;  where  ladies 
whose  clothing  is  too  low  for  blouses  and  too  high  for  evening 
frocks,  whose  jewels  flash  beyond  the  dreams  of  Gophir,  quaff 
the  sparkling  champagne  wine.  Where  the  illustrator  manages 
to  make  Miss  Irene  Vanbrugh  look  vulgar.  Where  American 
policemen  (or  admirals,  you  never  know)  arrest  crooks  in  mid-air; 
where  all  is  six-shooters,  bowie-knives,  cinches,  and  snarks.  Like 
poster  like  player,  is,  to  a  certain  extent,  true,  for  the  producer  is 
still  a  cross  between  Pimple  and  the  sort  of  stockbroker  whose  silk 

31 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

hat  glitters  in  eight  places.  (Observe  the  band  on  his  cigar.) 
But  that  producer,  like  that  poster,  is  the  old  tradition,  and  is 
giving  way  before  the  ordinary  business  man  who  does  not  see 
the  world  in  terms  of  banana  falls.  That  new  man  is  not  pressing 
his  actors  as  the  old  producer  did.  He  still  makes  them  register, 
but  less  intensely.  Register  means  to  mark  the  emotions.  When 
the  hero  is  being  filmed,  and  the  heroine  enters,  he  smiles;  if  he 
does  not  smile  beatifically  enough  the  producer  will  cry  to  him: 
*  Register  delight! '  You  have  all  seen  the  result.  In  the  old  days 
they  were  registering  all  the  time;  you  could  see  the  heroine 
registering  terror,  while  the  hero  registered  nobility,  and  the 
villain  registered  hate;  meanwhile,  the  old  mother  dropped  a 
stitch  and  registered  benevolence  with  extreme  pertinacity,  and, 
all  the  time,  servants  in  the  background  were  registering  national 
pride  and  rectitude.  One  still  has  to  do  these  things  on  the  cinema 
because,  after  all,  the  cinema  picture  has  to  be  photographable. 
It  has  to  be  seen  rather  plainly,  but  the  cinema  producer  has 
begun  to  understand  that,  to  be  effective,  facial  expression  need 
not  be  recognisable  a  mile  away. 

It  is  the  excessive  vigour  of  the  cinema  has  endeared  it  to 
Londoners;  most  of  them  are  a  rather  lymphatic  crowd,  because 
they  live  in  too  large  a  city,  surrounded  by  too  many  interesting 
things,  because  they  eat  rather  bad  food  and  not  enough  of  it, 
and  also  because  most  of  them  work  in  stuffy  offices  and  factories. 
Thus  they  need  strong  stimuli  if  they  are  to  react,  and  no 
doubt  that  is  why  cinemas  are  being  established  one  by  the  side 
of  the  other,  and  run  for  ten  hours  a  day.  Like  the  sensational 
stories  in  the  magazines,  like  the  newspapers  which  consist  in 
much  headline  and  little  text,  they  spur  this  tired  creature.  The 
more  he  is  spurred,  the  more  tired  he  grows.  The  more  tired  he 
grows,  the  more  he  needs  spurring.  So  the  cinema  must  prosper. 
But  I  think  it  will  prosper  in  a  more  moderate  way;  it  will  continue 
to  grow,  to  absorb  theatres  and  music-halls;  it  has  already 
absorbed  the  Coronet,  the  Canterbury,  Sadler's  Wells,  the  Tivoli, 
the  Scala,  the  London  Opera  House,  and  others;  but  I  think  it 
will  more  and  more  tend  to  produce  the  historical  film,  films  based 


PLAYGROUNDS 

on  novels  and  plays  of  some  slight  merit;  that  it  will  increasingly 
provide  bearable  music.  For  a  while  it  may  not  originate  much, 
and  therefore  it  will  not  easily  become  a  form  of  art.  I  am  not 
sure  that  it  can  become  a  form  of  art,  though  I  do  not  know  why : 
the  ballet  is  a  form  of  art,  and  people  like  Nijinsky,  Pavlova, 
Madame  Rambert  (let  alone  TagHoni  and  Gen£e)  have  made  a 
great  deal  of  it.  I  do  not  say  that  it  is  impossible  for  the  cinema 
to  produce  a  work  of  art,  but  this  must  be  within  the  limits  of 
pantomime,  which  are  close  and  narrow  limits.  Subtle  emotions 
it  cannot  express,  for  pantomime  cannot  figure  that  '  she  thought 
this,  because  she  thought  that  he  thought  that.'  (If  a  cinema 
company  will  film  The  Golden  Bowl,  I  will  burn  seven  candles  as  an 
offering  to  the  Albert  Memorial.)  All  that,  the  cinema  must  leave 
to  the  play  and  the  novel.  It  cannot  risk  wearying  the  audience 
by  leaving  it  for  half  an  hour  before  the  same  scene;  the  theatre 
can  do  that  because  the  voices  of  the  actors  afford  relief;  the 
cinema,  being  unable  to  reproduce  footsteps,  is  compelled  to 
reproduce  flying  feet.  Because  it  cannot  speak,  it  must  move, 
and  so  it  is  a  different  kind  of  thing. 

That  does  not  mean  that  it  need  always  be  the  rather  crude 
thing  it  is  to-day.  As  people  of  better  taste  come  into  the  business, 
we  are  likely  to  do  away  with  a  few  of  the  continual  changes  of 
scene;  we  shall  reduce  repetitions,  such  as  the  woman  who  end- 
lessly rocks  the  baby's  cradle  between  every  tragic  scene  in 
Intolerance.  Repetition  is  the  way  in  which  a  crude  taste  rams  its 
point  home;  a  fine  taste  will  select  its  points  better,  need  to  make 
them  less  obvious,  know  how  to  vary  them.  The  selective  art  of 
the  novelist  can  thus  be  applied.  Also,  the  finer  taste  will  not 
corrupt  the  actor  as  hitherto  he  has  been  corrupted,  by  leading 
him  into  a  wilderness  of  monkeys.  The  cinema  will  learn  restraint, 
that  first  need  of  all  art.  Some  of  the  actors,  such  as  Norma 
Talmadge,  Pauline  Frederick,  Mary  Pickford,  and  especially 
Charlie  Chaplin,  have  already  evolved  a  new  form  of  acting,  and 
not  a  mean  one.  When  Charlie  Chaplin  runs  along  a  road,  in 
that  queer,  lolloping  way  which  starts  from  the  shoulders  and 
animates  his  fingers  and  his  elbows,  chasing  a  Rolls-Royce  that  is 

33 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

obviously  travelling  at  a  hundred  and  twenty  miles  an  hour, 
when  thereupon  he  falls  into  a  ditch,  and  extricates  himself  with 
an  air  of  incredulity,  when  he  then  appears  to  realise,  with  a 
detachment  that  none  but  Plato  could  have  equalled,  that  he  is 
not  likely  to  catch  that  car,  and  decides  to  go  home,  Charlie  Chaplin 
does  a  wonderful  thing:  he  turns  his  back  on  the  audience,  and 
you  know,  from  a  little  ripple  in  his  back  that  he  is  considering 
the  situation.  Then  the  head  gives  a  jerk,  one  of  the  shoulders 
goes  up,  the  fingers  give  a  twist,  and  long  before  Charlie  Chaplin 
turns  round  to  face  the  audience,  with  his  soft  eyes  laughing, 
his  animate  body  has  told  you  what  he  meant:  *  It's  gone.  Oh, 
well,  I  don't  care.'  The  popularity  of  others  may  wane,  but 
Charlie  Chaplin  is  a  monument.  As  in  the  case  of  the  music- 
halls,  a  merciless  audience  has  formed,  and  its  love  has  readily 
been  given  to  the  best. 


34 


Ill 

THE  FRIENDLY  BOWL 


CHAPTER  III 

THE    FRIENDLY    BOWL 

HARD  things  are  said  of  the  London  public-house.  It  is  dirty; 
it  is  dingy;  there  is  nothing  to  sit  on;  there  is  nothing  to  read; 
it  possesses  neither  intellect  nor  domino  set;  it  is  not  a  place 
where  a  man  can  take  his  wife  and  family;  it  should  be  improved, 
it  should  be  suppressed  (subtle  distinction),  and  so  on.  The 
curious  side  of  these  assaults  is  that  the  people  who  rave  at  the 
public-house  are  not  the  people  one  sees  in  it,  and  one  wonders 
whether  they  passionately  desire  public-houses  after  their  own 
heart,  and,  presumably,  for  their  own  use.  I  have  visions  of  the 
public-house  of  their  dreams,  aesthetic  and  antiseptic,  furnished, 
according  to  persuasion,  with  Fabian  tracts,  or  tracts  of  greater 
orthodoxy.  I  imagine  a  staid  crowd  in  that  reformed  public- 
house,  let  us  say,  the  Reverend  Dr  Horton  and  party,  quaffing 
the  foaming  cider-cup  and  discussing  the  principles  of  recon- 
struction; Mr  Sidney  Webb  and  Mr  Bernard  Shaw  passionately 
engaged  at  spillikins  .  .  .  and  the  working  man  in  the  modest 
background. 

The  idea  has  little  attraction,  because,  frankly,  I  like  the 
London  public-house,  just  as  I  like  the  Paris  cafe  and  the  German 
beer-hall.  I  do  not  see  why  we  should  make  our  public-houses 
into  Parisian  cafes,  for  our  needs  differ  from  those  of  Parisians, 
and  we  do  not,  among  other  things,  visit  public-houses  to  play 
dominoes  or  to  read  The  Spectator.  Men  go  to  public-houses  to 
drink,  either  because  they  are  thirsty,  or  because  they  like  drink. 
Notably,  the  working  man  goes  there  to  be  rid  of  that  wife  and 
family  of  which  he  sees  quite  enough.  I  know  it  is  difficult  for 
the  well-to-do  man,  whose  house  contains  ten  rooms,  who  has 
a  private  room  at  his  office,  and  a  sulking  chair  at  his  club,  to 
understand  that  the  working  man,  who  generally  lives  in  two 
rooms  with  several  children  and  the  scented  memory  of  many 
meals,  should  want  to  escape  this  felicitous  atmosphere.  It  may 
also  strike  him  as  strange  that  the  working  man  should  not,  after 

37 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

a  ten-hour  day,  relish  '  a  good,  brisk  walk.'  Also,  he  does  not 
realise  that  ours  is  not  yet  a  kid-glove  civilisation,  and  that  most 
of  our  working  people  like  the  sensual  life.  Being  Anglo-Saxons, 
they  are  largely  impervious  to  art,  and  rather  crude  in  love;  so 
their  sensuality  finds  an  outlet  in  drink.  You  may  deplore  this 
sensuality,  but  it  is  no  use  trying  to  stem  it  by  making  distasteful 
the  conditions  under  which  it  is  indulged;  the  way  to  stem  it  is 
to  make  a  change  in  the  creature,  by  treating  it  as  a  man,  by 
paying  it  as  a  citizen,  and  by  granting  it  justice  instead  of  favour, 
education  instead  of  teaching. 

A  new  English  people  will  make  a  new  public-house;  to-day, 
they  have  the  public-house  they  deserve,  and  it  is  not  such  an 
evil  place  as  some  like  to  make  out.  Pellucid  reader,  have  you 
ever  visited  The  Green  Man  ?  The  Red  Lion  ?  or  The  Bedford 
Head  ?  Do  you  know  the  brew  of  The  Warrington  and  The 
Horseshoe's  chop  ?  I  like  their  busy  bars,  so  cunningly 
stratified  into  public  bar,  private  bar,  and  saloon.  They  are  a 
microcosm  of  English  society,  where  everybody  keeps  himself  to 
himself,  where  every  class  is  defiled  by  every  other  class  because 
the  one  beneath  is  '  low,'  and  the  one  above  '  stuck  up.'  In 
England,  classes  barely  establish  internal  toleration.  There  are 
few  equals  inside  classes.  One  either  looks  up  or  looks  down, 
and  one  never  looks  at.  But  in  public-houses  a  rude  toleration 
does  exist.  They  are  not  unattractive,  for  rough  friendship  is 
included  by  every  barmaid  in  the  '  gin  and  peach.'  One  talks  to 
people  one  does  not  know.  If  one  stays,  one  may  hear  the  history 
of  their  life.  Nor  are  all  public-houses  ugly;  there  is  a  Dickensian, 
a  Jacobean  charm  in  the  dazzle  of  their  many  glasses,  in  their 
piling  bottles,  their  ash-trays  presented  by  the  brewer,  their 
match-stands,  a  gift  from  the  distiller,  in  the  portraits  of 
horses  and  dogs  that  proclaim  the  virtues  of  Johnny  Walker, 
and  Black  and  White.  Aesthetically  speaking,  these  articles 
are  ugly,  but  they  have  a  certain  joviality  which  is  not  dis- 
agreeable. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  think  that  public-houses  are  all  alike.  No 
two  places  are  alike;  not  even  Lyons's  depots  are  all  alike,  for 
38 


THE  PUB 


To  face  paee  3? 


THE        FRIENDLY        BOWL 

the  personality  of  the  manageress  reveals  itself,  say  in  strange 
arrangements  of  salt-cellars.  The  casual  visitor  may  not  find 
much  difference  between  The  Red  Lion  in  the  Harrow  Road, 
The  Hero  of  Maida,  Bricklayers'  Arms,  or  The  Archway,  and  I 
will  not  stress  it.  But  it  would  need  a  more  than  casual  observer 
to  overlook  the  spacious  cleanliness  of  The  Warrington,  and  its 
rather  Victorian  air  of  solid  comfort;  should  he  go  to  Rule's,  or 
The  Cheshire  Cheese,  he  will  be  obsessed  by  the  domestic  fusti- 
ness  of  places  that  have  escaped  renovation  for  a  century.  Those 
old  taverns  reveal  a  London  little  older  than  fifty  years,  when  no 
Ritz-Carltons  were  open,  when  the  young  man  could  join  no 
club  until  he  was  a  middle-aged  one,  and  when  he  ate  his  meals 
in  his  rooms  in  Bury  Street  off  soiled  mahogany.  These  old 
places  are  traditional,  and  their  ale  is  traditional.  I  suspect  that 
it  is  a  secret  blend  of  old  ale  and  new  ale,  the  new  being  poured 
into  the  old  casks,  thus  ever  inheriting  and  ever  bequeathing  the 
virtues  of  the  family. 

And  other  inns  have  their  temperament,  which  is  that  of 
their  customers.  Thus,  at  the  public  houses  of  London 
Wall,  as  also  at  Coates's  Wine  Bar,  you  never  get  away  from  the 
sense  of  business.  These  places  are  friendly,  but  wary.  Likewise, 
at  The  Cock,  in  Fleet  Street,  there  is  more  noise  and  less  wariness, 
because  here  is  an  exchange  for  news,  and  occasionally  for  facts; 
farther  on,  at  ShirrefFs,  the  attraction  is  sound  wine  under  sound 
arches.  ShirrefFs  clientele  numbers  rather  obese  people  who 
know  how  to  treat  a  glass  of  port.  Thus  should  you  treat  a  glass 
of  port :  let  the  glass  be  not  quite  full,  so  that  the  holy  wine  may 
have  space  in  which  to  unwind  its  lovely  surface;  raise  the  glass, 
holding  its  stem  so  that  the  fingers  may  not  break  the  amber  oval 
of  its  form ;  then  raise  it  to  the  level  of  the  eyes,  so  that  the  pale  light 
of  the  city  may  stream  through  that  rich  amber,  and  emerge 
transfigured;  draw  closer;  respectfully  breathe  in  the  soft, 
insidious  scent  that  rises  to  your  nostrils  like  a  prayer.  Then 
only,  when  the  golden  ghost  has  spoken  to  all  senses  save  that  of 
taste,  drink,  and  drink  slowly,  without  haste,  with  respect,  not  as 
a  vulgar  man,  thirsty,  but  as  a  man  without  thirst,  and  risen  over 

39 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

such  necessity.  Thus  only  shall  you  be  companions  of  Amarante, 
Miranda,  and  Sabor. 

If  all  drank  with  such  elegance  we  might  hear  less  of  public- 
house  reform.  Of  late  years,  attempts  have  been  made  to  humanise 
the  public-house;  the  first  result  has  been  to  make  it  inhuman. 
I  lead  no  attack  upon  the  Public-House  Trust  and  the  People's 
Refreshment  House  Association.  They  are  excellent  bodies,  and 
once  upon  a  time  I  supported  them,  but  as  I  grow  older,  I  think 
I  grow  more  depraved.  I  know  it  is  not  pleasant  to  see  people 
drunk,  though  some  are  still  more  unpleasant  when  they  are 
sober;  I  do  not  support  the  public-house  in  selling  last  week's 
sandwiches  and  last  year's  cheddar,  but  still  ...  ale  that  hath 
no  sting  .  .  .  and  leadless  glaze !  Instinct  wars  with  my  reason;  I 
see  the  public-houses  grow  more  civilised,  and  a  faint  regret 
creeps  over  me  that  good  intentions  should  get  into  beer. 

It  is  true  that  at  the  other  end  of  the  scale  luxury  fights  with 
good  intentions  and  produces,  well,  not  the  abomination  of 
desolation,  but  the  greater  abomination  of  delectation  in  the 
shape  of  the  American  bar.  Already  a  young  civilisation  has 
produced  its  first-fruits,  such  as  broncho  busting,  college  yells, 
and  cinema  rides;  already  poets  quaff  from  the  foaming  soda- 
fountain  in  Hippocrene  City,  Pa.  (or  possibly  Minn.),  and  in  the 
friendly  bowl  mix  the  cocktail.  Magic  word,  eloquent  in  form! 
I  cannot  express  what  I  owe  to  the  cocktail:  it  provides  half  of 
what  a  dinner  party  needs,  for  it  stimulates  conversation.  The 
other  half  is  provided  by  bridge,  for  it  stops  this  conversation. 
The  power  of  the  cocktail  is  not  that  of  the  pure  in  heart;  it  is  a 
complex,  a  modern;  it  is  a  congress  of  alcohols;  nothing  is  alien 
to  it;  nothing  can  hallow  it;  nothing  can  resist  its  repeated 
assaults.  With  all  drinks  it  has  affinity.  It  carries  the  bar  sinister 
of  all  liqueurs.  Bitters  and  Curasao,  whisky  and  maraschino, 
brandy,  vermouth  and  cassis,  Fernet  Branca,  gentle  raspberry, 
all  of  these;  and  creme  de  menthe,  and  gin,  and  absinthe,  and 
apple-jack,  these,  too,  are  of  its  fiery  soul,  and  apricot  brandy 
that  is  like  a  blush,  sherry  like  a  burnt  topaz,  paprika  to  make 
you  leap,  and  sly  benedictine,  dancing  anisette,  and  port  like  a 
40 


THE        FRIENDLY        BOWL 

minor  canon,  gins  from  Plymouth,  and  Schiedam,  virginal 
grenadine,  all  can  join  with  all  the  fruits  the  world  has  ever  known, 
cherry,  lemon,  tangerine,  olive,  spray  of  tarragon  too.  And  thus  one 
begins  a  cocktail.  Let  your  basis  be  gin  ;  enlist  vermouth;  let 
bitter  and  maraschino  creep  in:  behold  Martini!  But  expel  the 
vermouth  to  substitute  apricot  brandy:  then  you  have  Hungarian. 
But  if  for  you  gin  has  no  fire,  then  let  your  mainstay  be  rye  whisky : 
its  allies,  bitter  and  vermouth,  and  Manhattan  for  you  appears. 
And  others  for  you  shall  rise,  soda  cocktail  and  love  tree,  or  silver 
fizz,  or  blagden  punch  ...  or  hot  apple  toddy.  Treat  not  the 
cocktail  rudely.  Let  all  coalitions  be  gradual,  and  temper  their 
fire  with  ground  ice;  then  cast  the  whole  in  the  silver  mixer  and 
shake,  shake,  shake.  While  you  shake,  meditate. 

In  English  bars  they  neither  shake  nor  meditate;  they  drink 
too  uncritically  the  expression  of  the  brewer's  artistic  temperament, 
and  give  forth  too  little  of  their  own.  But,  still,  they  are  pleasant 
enough,  these  bars,  whether  British,  as  the  gloomily  popular 
Leicester  Lounge,  or  foreign  as  the  Monico.  They  have 
all  the  well-bred  indifference  of  the  Englishman  who  asks 
you  no  questions  because  he  seeks  no  answers,  who  makes 
no  comments  because  he  has  nothing  to  say.  You  need,  you  pay, 
you  are  satisfied,  you  go.  There  is  no  revelry.  For  true  revelry, 
the  glass  that  sparkles  and  the  jug  that  foams,  you  must  go  to 
some  club  at  least  a  hundred  years  old,  and  in  St  James's  Street  or 
Pall  Mall,  where  '  old  man  '  and  '  old  thing  '  know  each  other's 
record  and  capacity,  where,  under  an  ancient  roof,  the  prairie 
oyster  revives  the  spirits  that  flagged  in  the  Row.  Watch  the 
bow  windows  of  some  ancient  club,  and,  while  still  holding  that 
good  wine  needs  no  bush,  confess  that  good  wine  gets  it. 


L.M.  D  41 


IV 
WANDERERS 


CHAPTER  IV 

WANDERERS 

ALPHONSE  DAUDET,  when  analysing  Tartarin  de  Tarascon,  found 
in  him  two  Tartarins,  Tartarin  Quixote  and  Tartarin  Sancho. 
Tartarin  Quixote  liked  fighting,  adventure,  uncertainty,  blood, 
knives,  unscalable  peaks,  tornadoes  at  sea.  Tartarin  Sancho 
liked  flannel  vests,  long  drinks  of  lemonade  on  a  hot  day,  chocolate 
in  bed  in  the  morning.  No  doubt,  Tartarin  Quixote  and  Tartarin 
Sancho  live  in  many  of  us,  and  certainly  I  confess  to  desperate 
moods  which,  on  the  whole,  I  restrain,  and  to  self-indulgent 
moods  which,  on  the  whole,  I  encourage;  but  when  we  consider 
men  we  know,  it  is  curious  how  much  more  strongly  Tartarin 
Sancho  or  Tartarin  Quixote  is  developed  in  them.  Tartarin 
Sancho  leads  the  majority  of  mankind,  that  majority  which  is 
always  looking  for  a  good  billet,  for  a  pension,  for  a  nice  little 
wife,  a  cat,  and  a  garden.  Some,  more  ambitious,  substitute  for 
the  nice  little  wife  a  woman  of  title,  for  the  cat  a  hunter,  for  the 
garden  an  estate,  but  their  desires,  after  all,  are  still  those  of 
Sancho,  even  though  they  are  those  of  Sancho  become  Governor 
of  Barataria.  Naturally  they  adopt  the  wadded  life.  It  is  not  a 
crime,  and  no  doubt  many  of  the  Tartarin  Quixotes,  who  number 
among  them  tight-rope  dancers,  mining  magnates,  card-sharpers, 
and  cabinet  ministers,  often  come  to  regret  the  bed  quilt  of  a 
blameless  life.  Only  the  bed  quilt  is  not  for  them. 

Somehow,  I  don't  know  why,  I  cannot  help  feeling  that 
Tartarin  Sancho  is  less  normal  than  Tartarin  Quixote.  He  does 
such  strange  things;  he  enlists  in  a  bank,  grinds  out  his  little 
span  of  life  and  dies;  or  he  becomes  a  barrister,  pleads  cases  he 
believes  in,  and  also  others;  or  Tartarin  Sancho  turns  into  a 
respectable  stockbroker,  that  is  to  say,  he  never  speculates,  but 
induces  other  people  to  gamble;  or  he  becomes  a  professional 
soldier,  and  passes  the  first  half  of  his  life  hoping  there  will  be 
a  war;  if  there  is  none,  then  he  passes  the  other  half  in  the  rather 
more  decayed  parts  of  Earl's  Court.  These  are  queer  trades,  for 

45 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

they  do  not  seem  to  satisfy  anything  that  man  needs  if  he  is  to 
feel  complete.  It  is  not  enough  that  a  man  should,  by  the  time  he 
dies,  have  manufactured,  let  us  say,  large  quantities  of  office 
furniture,  have  played  golf,  have  gone  to  Eastbourne  or  Monte 
Carlo,  have  met  the  one  girl  whom  he  wrongly  imagined  to  be 
the  only  girl  in  the  world,  ignoring  the  fact  that  there  are  thousands 
like  her,  have  reproduced  the  species  and  left  them  behind  to  do 
likewise.  4  Such  is  life,'  says  my  old  friend  the  housekeeper  of 
Wellington  Buildings,  Bethnal  Green;  she  is  right,  but  somehow 
this  explanation  does  not  satisfy  me,  and  I  wonder  whether  all 
those  respectable,  clean-living  people  are  not  really  degenerates, 
in  so  far  as  they  have  lost  the  desire  for  colour  in  life.  It  may  be 
that  Tartarin  Quixote  does  not  desire  colour  in  life,  and  that 
he  would  gladly  exchange  the  pebbly  bed  of  romance  for  the 
eiderdown  of  the  regular  life;  still,  what  a  man  does  matters,  as 
well  as  what  a  man  desires.  It  is  all  very  well  praising  the  mute, 
inglorious  Milton  in  the  factory  or  the  shop,  but  the  Milton  who 
manages  to  break  the  silence  is  also  important  in  the  scheme. 
The  idea  is  greater  than  the  fact,  but  to  deny  the  fact  would  be  to 
run  Plato  too  far. 

Therein  lies  the  charm  of  the  queer  people,  in  whom  London 
is  rich,  people  who  follow  unexpected  occupations,  occupations 
that  nobody  would  naturally  think  of  following.  One  can  under- 
stand how  Mrs  Smith  comes  to  hear  from  one  of  her  husband's 
friends  that  they  want  an  apprentice  in  the  printing  shop;  she 
sends  little  Tommy  to  the  printing  shop,  and  he  becomes  a  printer. 
But  how  does  little  Paolo  become  an  ice-cream  man  ?  There  are 
lots  of  ice-cream  men,  and  so  we  must  believe  that  some  impulse 
directed  young  Paolo  towards  ice-cream.  How  did  it  happen  ? 
Was  it  a  vocation,  this  selling  of  ice-cream  ?  Did  he  discover  an 
ice-cream  opening  ?  I  don't  know;  I  once  asked  an  ice-cream 
merchant  why  he  sold  ice-cream.  He  told  me  that  he  did  it 
because  his  father  did  it.  Then  I  asked  him  why  his  father  sold 
ice-cream.  He  told  me  that  his  father  sold  ice-cream  because  his 
grandfather  sold  ice-cream.  Then  I  saw  that  we  might  go  on 
for  a  long  time  like  this,  and  let  him  alone,  for  the  ice-cream 
46 


WANDERERS 

merchant  was  growing  suspicious.  I  am  glad  that  I  do  not 
know  whether  his  grandfather  sold  ice-cream  because  his  great- 
grandfather sold  ice-cream,  for  this  leaves  a  little  to  my  imagination, 
and  I  am  able  to  imagine  that  in  the  misty  cinquecento,  some 
adventurous  Florentine,  some  relative  of  Benvenuto  Cellini,  was 
impelled  to  forsake  a  hospitable  guild  to  push  about  the  European 
tracks  the  gay  little  carriage  that  to-day  bears  the  Italian  flag, 
diplomatically  intertwined  with  the  flag  of  the  country  in  which 
the  merchant  happens  to  trade,  the  portrait  of  King  Victor,  and, 
on  the  other  side,  some  touching  scene  such  as  '  Mother's  Last 
Kiss.' 

The  ice-cream  man  sets  out  every  day  on  adventure.  He 
may  have  a  beat,  but  I  prefer  to  think  that  he  follows  in  the  wake 
of  the  sun,  always  where  it  is  hottest,  caring  little  whether  the 
street  be  mean  or  opulent.  I  like  to  think  of  him  as  at  the  mercy 
of  a  cold  snap  that  ruins  him,  while  it  makes  the  fortune  of  his 
fellow  merchant,  the  hot-potato  man.  (What  a  beautiful  poem 
Tennyson  would  have  made  of  that  .  .  .  the  golden  wheel  turning, 
and  raising  high,  now  the  ice-cream,  then  the  hot  potato  .  .  .  and 
always  above  a  noble  voice  bidding  them  hope  and  pray.)  Of 
course,  there  are  no  hot-potato  men  now.  I  wonder  what  happened 
to  them.  Indeed,  that  is  what  oppresses  the  curious  when  he 
considers  the  wanderers:  what  becomes  of  them  when  they  are 
no  longer  strong  enough  to  ply  their  strange  trades  and  to  range 
the  world  ?  Are  our  workhouses  full  of  crossing-sweepers  who 
sweep  no  more  ?  Perhaps  it  is  not  so  tragic,  after  all,  to  have  been 
a  crossing-sweeper  and  to  end  in  the  workhouse;  I  cannot  imagine 
a  crossing-sweeper  murmuring  with  Mr  Kipling:  *  Me  that  'ave 
been  what  I've  been!  '  for  he  has  never  been  more  than  what 
Mr  Tim  Healy  would  call  a  movable  fixture.  He  has  just  sat 
and  touched  his  cap,  and  been  tipped,  and  has  occasionally  swept. 
But  he  must  have  meditated.  No  man  can  sit  for  ten  hours  a 
day  in  the  same  place  without  meditating;  I  say  this  without 
authority,  for  I  have  known  only  one  crossing-sweeper  who 
meditated  to  any  effect;  he  was  a  pronounced  optimist,  and 
believed  that  the  world  was  getting  better  and  better,  this  because, 

47 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

for  forty  years,  he  had  been  observing  the  quality  of  people's 
boots.  As  he  put  it,  when  he  started  in  life  some  of  them  wore 
no  boots;  later  on,  they  began  to  wear  other  people's  cast-off 
boots;  now  they  were  getting  on  to  buy  their  own  boots,  and 
what  with  that,  and  what  with  the  skirts  getting  shorter  and 
shorter,  and  the  stocking  getting  thinner  and  thinner,  by  gum, 
he  was  blowed  if  he  knew  what  was  going  to  happen  next. 

No,  crossing-sweepers  are  not  wanderers.  They  are  limpets. 
I  should  not  have  thought  of  them  if  they  were  not  street  folk, 
for  it  is  a  distinguishing  trait  of  the  wanderer  that  he  is  a  street 
creature,  something  that  appears  from  the  stones  in  the  early 
morning,  and  at  night  into  the  stones  seems  to  vanish.  The 
London  wanderer  may  have  a  home,  but  only  in  the  sense  of  the 
London  sparrow.  Can  you  imagine  the  flower-girl's  home  ? 
If  the  flower-girl  were  indeed  the  sort  of  flower-girl  of  whom  you 
see  half  a  hundred  portraits  every  year  in  the  Royal  Academy, 
a  sort  of  pure  and  peach-blossom  girl,  she  would  have  a  home 
like  Me'lisande,  very,  very  small  and  dainty  (you  know,  the 
Charbonnel  and  Walker- Marcus  Stone  style),  with  chairs  covered 
in  flowered  chintzes,  and  a  white  cat.  At  night  she  would  lie  in 
her  little  white  bed,  over  the  head  of  which  would  hang  a  text 
about  the  lilies  of  the  field;  her  fair  hair  would  ripple  over  the 
pillow;  her  rosy  lips  would  open  in  a  sweet  smile  as  she  dreamed 
of  the  dear  little  faded  flowers  which  she  had  stood  for  the  night 
in  her  tooth-glass.  (Tooth-glass!  Nasty  realist  touch;  I  shall 
never  do  this  sort  of  thing  properly.)  Ah,  if  it  were  only  like  that ! 
If  she  were  not  a  big,  fine  woman  of  about  forty,  tied  up  in  three 
thick  shawls,  which  imperfectly  conceal  her  tidal  bodice;  if  only 
she  did  not  so  much  love  a  quartern  of  gin.  It  would  be  much 
more  romantic,  but  I  should  regret  her  if  she  were  to  turn  into  a 
picture  post  card,  for  she  is  such  a  jolly  good,  saucy  sort,  as  a  rule, 
and  I  like  her  thick  hand  terminated  by  five  sausages,  one  of 
these  sausages  strangulated  by  a  wedding  ring,  the  thick- 
ness of  which  places  one  beyond  all  cynicism  as  to  the  permanence 
of  the  tie.  You  see  her  in  many  places,  by  the  fountain  at  Piccadilly 
Circus,  until  all  the  nobs  have  bought  a  bunch  of  violets  for 
48 


To  face  page  4$ 


FLOWER  GIRL 


WANDERERS 

somebody,  now  that  they  have  given  up  the  habit  of  buying  a 
flower  for  themselves;  then  you  see  her  near  restaurant  entrances, 
cleverly  shaming  men  into  buying  flowers  for  women  who  are 
already  wearing  some,  and  who  do  not  know  what  to  do  with  the 
offering  because  it  is  invariably  very  wet;  later  on,  outside  theatres 
near  the  queues;  she  is  all  enterprise,  and  during  the  war  I  even 
saw  her  trying  to  sell  to  an  unpromising  margarine  queue. 

She  grows  old  at  her  trade;  it  is  a  healthy  one,  and  she  has 
no  home.  Some  of  her  fellows  are  stranger  and  still  more  definably 
homeless.  Thus  the  muffin-man,  killed,  perhaps,  by  the  war. 
It  is  a  long  time  since  I  heard  his  bell,  and  was  thereby  assured 
that  Sunday  was  getting  on  nicely,  and  would  be  over  by-and-by. 
There  is  the  travelling  accountant,  a  real  wanderer,  that  one, 
who,  every  day  and  night,  goes  from  little  shop  to  little  factory, 
continually  confronted  with  new  names,  new  deals,  and,  perhaps, 
new  and  complicated  methods  of  dishonesty.  There  are  the 
queerest  and  most  incomprehensible  of  all,  the  guides.  I  do  not 
know  what  turns  a  man  into  a  guide,  but  if  you  stand  awhile  near 
Charing  Cross,  and  make  a  noise  like  a  Jugo-Slav,  it  is  likely  that 
a  seedily,  respectably  dressed  man,  with  a  badly  rolled  umbrella, 
will  offer  to  show  you  the  town.  Once  it  is  clear  that  he  does  not 
want  to  exchange  pocket-books  with  you  to  show  his  confidence, 
he  may  lead  you  to  Henry  V.'s  chapel,  to  Westminster  Abbey, 
to  Carlyle's  house,  and  so  on,  reciting  as  he  goes,  something  like 
this :  '  The  painted  .'all  was  originally  planned  by  King  John  the 
same  who  signed  that  Magna  Charta  in  the  year  1215  but  the 
plans  being  lost  in  the  Wash  the  project  did  not  come  to  take 
form  before  the  year  1533  when  King  Henry  VIII  after  his 
marriage  with  Anne  Boleyn  laid  the  foundations  on  the  plans  of 
Sir  'Erbert  'Opkins  who  was  also  the  architect  of  the  golden 
tower  of  Muswell  '111  where  Nell  Gwynn  .  .  .'  and  so  on.  That 
man  is  a  gramophone;  I  once  let  him  show  me  Saragossa,  but  he 
shall  never  show  me  anything  more.  For  one  thing,  I  believe  he 
is  respectable  at  heart,  and  there  is  no  profit  in  his  company.  The 
only  good  guide  is  the  amateur  guide.  I  met  one  in  Brussels 
once,  a  cab-driver,  who  stopped  before  the  cafe  where  I  was 

49 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

having  a  drink;  he  so  many  times  cried  out  to  me,  '  Hi,  English- 
man! you're  a  sportsman,  come  along!  '  that  I  fell  a  prey  to  his 
flattery.  (Who  told  him  that  every  Englishman  wants  to  be 
thought  a  sportsman  ?)  He  knew  his  Brussels  pretty  well,  but  I 
will  not  tell  you  the  rest  of  the  story,  for  he  also  knew  his 
Englishman  pretty  well. 

There  are  many  more  of  these  strange  people.  A  strange  one 
was  a  woman  who  offered  to  give  me  a  thousand  guesses  at  her 
profession;  I  declined  the  proposal  and  found  out  that  she  was 
a  pearl  threader.  Few  of  us  know  that  the  silken  thread,  on  which 
collars  of  pearls  are  strung,  wears  out,  and  that,  from  time  to 
time,  pearls  have  to  be  re-strung.  All  women  do  not  care  to 
send  their  pearls  to  the  jeweller,  for  the  art  of  Tecla  is  profound. 
Nor  do  they  care  to  re-thread  them  themselves,  for  the  holes  are 
so  small  that  the  work  is  infinitely  wearisome.  So  my  pearl- 
threader,  who  looked  like  the  most  respectable  type  of  retired 
maid,  spent  her  life  in  Mayfair  and  Belgravia,  where  she  sat 
re-threading  pearls  while  the  owner  read  a  novel.  The  pearl- 
threader  smiled  as  she  told  this:  '  One  of  them,'  she  said,  '  read 
a  newspaper  upside  down  all  the  time  while  I  was  doing  her  pearls. 
And  there  is  another,  so  unsuspicious;  she  turns  her  back  on 
me  and  smokes  a  cigarette,  and  stares  into  the  looking-glass, 
dreamy-like.' 

But  that  is  a  high  walk  of  wanderer.  There  are  others  more 
tragic.  There  used  to  be  a  terrible  creature,  the  runner,  who 
followed  four-wheelers  laden  with  luggage,  and  arrived  at  the  end 
of  his  long  run  too  blown  to  be  red  in  the  face,  but  lead  white, 
his  right  hand  gripped  to  his  heart,  his  left  hand  spasmodically 
touching  the  greasy  brim  of  his  cap.  I  have  seen  no  greater 
agony  than  the  hungry  desire  in  those  filmy  eyes,  half-obscured 
by  the  wet,  dust-laden  eyelids.  I  used  to  stop  the  runners  when 
I  could;  often  they  persisted,  their  open  mouth  close  to  the 
wheel;  they  could  not  see  me  wave  them  away,  or  they  could  not 
hear  me  call  out,  as  if  all  the  energy  of  their  poor  senses  had 
passed  into  those  eternally  running  legs.  One  of  them  seized 
my  trunk  as  we  arrived,  before  I  could  ransom  myself,  hating 
50 


WANDERERS 

my  opulence,  full  of  shame.  It  is  fifteen  years  ago,  but  I  remember 
him,  a  big  body,  but  little  flesh;  I  remember  his  eyes  like  glass, 
and  the  awful  stagger  of  him  as  he  bent  under  the  weight  of  the 
trunk,  as  he  tottered,  and  as  I  leaped  to  seize  it  when  it  fell.  Then 
the  door  opened,  and  the  hotel  waiter  came  out  with  the  air  of 
black  hostility  which  the  house  dog  has  for  the  street  dog.  The 
runner  looked  at  us  without  anger,  without  misery,  though  he 
understood  very  well  that  the  job  was  not  for  him;  he  was  like 
a  Greek  peasant  patiently  encountering  fate.  But,  as  he  turned 
away,  clasping  my  shilling  in  his  hand,  and  I  saw  the  foot  in  the 
broken  boot  fumble  for  the  step,  a  wave  of  self-hatred  rose  in  me. 
I  told  myself:  *  You  have  crucified  him.' 

They  are  not  so  tragic,  all  of  them,  unaccountable  people, 
or  even  people  who  have  adopted  trades  one  thinks  queer  because 
one  would  not  have  adopted  them  oneself.  Some  are  merely 
disgusting,  such  as  the  bus-conductor.  I  have  met  a  civil  bus- 
conductor;  I  have  even  met  an  optimistic  one,  but  nowadays, 
especially,  he  stands  exposed  by  comparison  with  the  girl-con- 
ductor. Oh,  it  is  natural  enough  that  the  girl  should  have  been 
friendly,  civil,  clean,  obliging,  for  to  her  the  job  was  new,  varied, 
faintly  exciting,  probably  better  paid  than  her  previous  work.  But 
still,  she  made  the  man  terrible.  He  seems  to  be  nearly  always 
a  rather  grimy,  ill-shaven,  misanthropic  man;  something  of  the 
watch-dog  and  of  the  bureaucrat  has  crept  into  his  constitution; 
he  cannot  gently  ask  for  fares;  the  demand  must  come  with  a 
snap  and  a  snarl,  pitched  on  a  high  note  that  shall  reach  the 
recesses  of  the  omnibus  and  of  the  traveller's  consciousness. 
When  he  yelps:  '  Fares!  '  I  feel  for  my  ticket  as  if  I  were  guilty; 
when  he  looks  at  me,  his  little,  hard  eye  suggests  that  I  am  bilking 
the  company,  and  then  I  hate  him  so  that,  if  I  can,  I  do  bilk  the 
company,  and  get  off  four  hundred  yards  to  the  good,  bursting 
with  an  unexpelled  shout  of '  Yah !  '  I  hate  him  above  all  because, 
so  often,  he  companions  my  journey  with  a  snarly  chorus,  addressed 
sometimes  to  the  wretched  nearest  occupant.  One  hears  him  run 
on:  *  Some  people  can't  learn  where  buses  stop;  seem  to  think 
it's  the  Lord  Mayor's  coach;  pulling  the  string  themselves,  too; 

51 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

might  as  well  be  no  conductor.'  Or  it  is  something  like  this: 
'  Chucking  their  half-crowns  about;  taking  about  four  hours 
finding  'em,  too;  come  into  the  bus  and  expect  to  get  change 
as  if  it  was  a  blooming  bank;  gave  her  twenty-four  ha'pennies 
though,  that'll  learn  her.'  Or,  during  a  shower:  '  Plenty 
room  on  top.  Drop  o'  rain  won't  'urt  yer.  When  it's  fine  they 
all  want  to  get  on  top.'  And  so  on,  a  regular  orgy  of  grace  and 
charm.  Growl,  grouse,  snap,  snarl,  grumble,  yap,  and  long, 
dirty  moustaches,  filthy  hands,  and  if  it  is  not  a  grudging  black 
hand  to  help  a  white  sleeve  on  to  the  bus,  it  is  a  hand  that  has  to 
restrain  itself  not  to  shove  the  white  shoulder  off.  All  that  because 
the  poor  brute  is  not  happy.  I  know  I  ought  to  be  sympathetic, 
for  it  must  be  dreadful  to  travel  all  day  from  Camden  Town  to 
Brixton  and  back,  to  sell  so  small  a  variety  of  goods,  never  to  feel 
steady  ground  under  your  feet  when  you  look  for  change,  to 
answer  the  same  idiotic  question  seventy  times  a  day,  to  tread  on 
feet,  to  have  your  feet  trodden  on.  The  bus-conductor  is  a  nasty 
man  because  he  is  an  unhappy  man,  because  he  has  no  prospect 
in  life,  save  that  of  growing  older  and,  for  all  I  know,  retiring 
without  a  pension.  Those  monotonous  occupations,  such  as  the 
hellish  one  of  lift-man,  ought  not  to  be  human  occupations,  and 
they  will  not  be  such  some  day.  Meanwhile,  they  rack  by 
boredom  people  to  whom  has  not  been  given  the  free  expanse 
of  the  pedlar.  What  a  brute  Charon  must  have  become  by 
now! 

Those  people  who  range  freely  street  and  field  are  indeed 
of  another  kind ;  there  is  in  them  less  civilisation  and  more  civility. 
They  are  detached  from  their  fellows;  they  lead  lives  of  their  own 
within  the  beating  life  of  the  world.  Many  of  the  newspaper- 
sellers  are  pleasant,  ironic  people,  with  a  capacity  for  estimating 
character,  with  a  quick  interest  in  the  news  they  retail.  Citizens 
of  the  world,  they  are  often  so  stimulated  by  their  news  that,  as 
you  buy,  they  must  tell  you  the  contents  of  the  stop-press.  It  is 
a  hard  trade.  Before  the  war  they  used  to  pay  ninepence  for 
twenty-seven  halfpenny  papers:  fourpence-halfpenny  profit  for 
selling  twenty-seven  papers!  Still,  there  is  a  nomadic  satisfaction 

5* 


WANDERERS 

in  their  movable  beat.  They  are  not  locked  up.  They  are  in  the 
midst  of  life,  other  people's  life,  but  yet  life. 

To  quite  another  class  belong  the  beggars,  not  the  pseudo- 
beggars  who  profess  to  sell  laces  or  matches,  or  the  blind,  for 
these  are  inanimate  beggars  and  nobody  knows  what  goes  on 
behind  their  faces,  but  the  adventurous  beggars,  the  old  woman 
who  follows  you,  shrilly  asking  for  the  price  of  a  cup  of  tea,  or  the 
well-known  teacher  of  French,  who  stops  you  in  the  street  and 
asks  you  what  chance  he  has  of  a  professorship  at  King's  College. 
Those  adventurers  are  amusing  because  they  are  coloured, 
because,  if  you  stop,  they  will  tell  you  where  they  come  from,  the 
number  and  names  of  their  children,  the  diseases  from  which 
they  suffer,  and,  indeed,  recite  you  the  shameless  novel  of  their  lives. 

Of  the  same  kind,  but  more  offensive,  is  the  fern-seller  who 
is  nearly  always  (or  was  before  the  war)  a  particularly  burly  brute, 
carrying  a  couple  of  potted  ferns  under  each  arm.  He  haunts 
the  quieter  streets  of  the  West  End,  and  when  a  woman  alone 
meets  him  late  at  night,  she  will  do  well  to  make  for  the  nearest 
policeman,  the  proper  method  being  to  ask  the  fern-seller  to 
carry  the  ferns  home  for  her:  a  policeman  will  doubtless  be 
encountered  on  the  way.  I  remember  a  fern-seller,  who  accosted 
me  once  in  Portman  Square.  It  was  about  six  o'clock  in  the 
evening;  I  told  the  man  that  I  wanted  no  ferns;  he  followed 
me,  rumbling  abuse  which  I  could  hardly  hear.  As  it  happened, 
I  was  looking  for  lodgings,  and  stopped  at  a  likely  house  in 
Portman  Street.  As  I  had  been  walking  rather  fast,  I  thought 
that  I  had  got  rid  of  him,  but,  seeing  I  was  going  into  a  house, 
he  ran  up  behind  me,  and  once  more  began  his  pressure.  While 
I  was  ordering  him  off  the  door  opened,  and  a  fat  little  landlord, 
with  a  grubby  little  white  beard  and  choleric  little  blue  eyes  in  a 
puffy  little  pink  face,  stood  staring  in  the  doorway.  *  If  you  don't 
go,'  I  said  to  the  man,  '  I'll  give  you  in  charge.'  But  the  man 
went  on  whining  and  growling  and,  being  very  young,  I  was 
rilled  with  awful  confusion  at  this  brawl  on  the  step.  This  was 
increased  by  the  nasty  little  landlord,  who  said :  '  What  do  you 
want  ? ' 

53 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

'  I  want  to  see  some  rooms,'  I  replied,  and  to  the  fern-seller: 
4  Did  you  hear  what  I  said  ?  ' 

4  I've  got  no  rooms,'  snapped  the  landlord,  '  get  out  of  it, 
both  of  you.' 

*  What  the  devil  do  you  mean  by  both  of  you  ?  '  I  said  to  the 
landlord,  being  thoroughly  enraged.  Then  I  became  paralysed 
at  having  to  quarrel  on  two  different  subjects  simultaneously. 

4  Mean  by  it! '  shouted  the  little  landlord.  '  What  do  you 
mean  by  creating  a  disturbance  on  my  doorstep  ?  Let  rooms  to 
the  likes  of  you !  You're  drunk ! ' 

At  that  moment  the  fern-seller  was  breathing  on  me,  and  I 
saw  that  the  landlord's  words  were  well-founded,  though  ill- 
directed.  Before  I  could  think  of  a  reply,  the  little  landlord 
slammed  his  door  so  as  to  make  the  whole  of  Portman  Street 
shake.  And  I  remained  alone  with  the  fern-seller,  who  still 
painstakingly  and  threateningly  attempted  to  make  me  buy 
ferns.  He  was  the  sort  of  man  who  speaks  from  under  his  under 
lip.  I  was  so  ashamed  that  I  did  not  say  one  word,  but  ran.  Oh! 
how  good  and  free  Oxford  Street  felt. 

I  have  not  been  much  annoyed  or  interested  by  the  more 
desperate  wanderers  one  comes  across.  Only  once  did  anything 
perilous  come  my  way,  and  that  I  will  call  '  The  Row  in  Homer 
Row.'  It  was  many  years  ago.  I  had,  one  evening,  made  an 
acquaintanceship  with  the  light  fallibility  that  will,  I  hope, 
always  characterise  youth.  It  did  not  at  once  have  results ;  some 
other  business  intervened,  but  I  remember  quite  well  that  I 
returned  at  nine  o'clock  to  a  little  block  of  flats,  that  were  not 
exactly  flats,  but  superior  model  dwellings.  I  remember  the 
hard,  stone  stairs  and  the  iron  banisters,  you  will  soon  see  why. 
As  I  left,  later  in  the  evening,  I  shut  the  door  of  the  flat  behind 
me,  and  stood  for  a  second  in  the  entire  blackness  of  the  landing. 
Then  I  felt  a  foot  against  my  left  ankle,  and  a  hand  grip  my  left 
arm.  It  was  the  darkness  saved  me,  for  it  is  not  easy  accurately 
to  seize  an  arm  in  the  dark,  and  the  notorious  '  pull-over '  is  not 
suited  for  cellar  blackness.  I  remember  that  I  did  not  think, 
that  I  did  not  have  time  to  be  afraid.  I  remember  only  the  vast 
54 


WANDERERS 

unchaining  of  a  self-protective  instinct,  that  swung  my  right 
hand  across  to  the  left.  I  swear  I  did  not  will  it.  And  I  still 
have  unforgettably  in  my  knuckles  the  sensation  of  crash  and 
give,  in  my  ears  the  curious,  fat  sound,  something  like  '  kroch,' 
that  was  made  by  some  teeth  giving  way  under  the  blow.  And 
then  there  was  an  immensely  long  pause,  during  which  I  had 
time  to  think;  it  may  have  lasted  a  tenth  of  a  second.  There 
was  a  dull,  muffled  sound,  that  of  a  head  striking  the  iron  banisters. 
That  is  all,  except  that  I  remember  the  clatter  of  my  feet  on  the 
stone  stairs. 

But  to  the  man  who  wanders  in  London  streets  at  night,  and 
I  am  one  of  these,  stranger  things  happen.  One  of  those  cases 
was  '  The  Poisoned  Girl  of  Grosvenor  Square.'  It  was  about 
twelve  o'clock  at  night.  As  I  turned  out  of  Brook  Street  into  the 
Square,  I  saw  on  my  right  two  people  by  the  railings  of  an  area. 
One  was  a  woman  dressed  in  black,  kneeling  down  and  holding 
on  to  the  railings  by  one  hand.  The  other  was  a  man,  who  stood 
a  few  yards  off,  with  statue-like  immobility.  I  remember  thinking : 
1  This  is  awkward.  He  has  been  knocking  her  about,  and  I 
suppose  I  shall  have  to  say  something,  and  if  he  attacks  me  in 
front  no  doubt  she'll  attack  me  from  behind.'  But  still,  there  was 
nothing  to  do  but  to  say  something.  So  I  went  up  to  them,  and 
suddenly  realised  that  the  two  people  had  nothing  to  do  with 
each  other.  She  was  kneeling  in  that  frozen  attitude,  and  he  was 
looking  on.  The  girl  was  young,  very  white,  with  masses  of 
fair  hair.  She  was  neatly  dressed  in  black,  and  looked  like  a 
parlourmaid.  Her  eyes  were  closed,  and  she  seemed  hardly  to 
breathe.  Two  or  three  times  I  asked  her  what  was  the  matter, 
but  she  did  not  reply.  Then  only  did  I  look  at  the  man,  who 
was  evidently  of  another  class.  A  rather  large,  square  man,  the 
sort  of  man  whom  you  know  to  be  bald,  though  he  has  his  hat 
on,  with  a  moustache  that  was  too  thick,  and  cheeks  that  were 
too  healthy,  a  phlegmatic,  staring  man. 

'  What's  the  matter  with  her  ?  '  I  asked. 

'  I  don't  know,'  said  the  man. 

As  it  was  clear  that  he  was  the  sort  of  man  who  wouldn't 

55 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

know,  I  turned  to  the  girl  and,  taking  her  by  the  shoulder,  tried 
to  make  her  stand  up.  I  was  surprised  to  find  her  limp  instead  of 
stiff,  and  she  fell  back  against  my  shoulder  with  a  little  groan. 

'  Let  me  alone,'  she  murmured. 

4  What's  the  matter  ? '  I  asked  again.  '  Are  you  in  any 
trouble  ? ' 

'  Let  me  alone,'  she  said  again. 

I  felt  irritated  because  she  did  not  realise  that  I  couldn't  let 
her  alone,  that  man's  code  compelled  me  to  torture  her,  and  that 
nothing  in  the  world  could  allow  me  to  let  her  alone. 

4  Let  me  help  you,'  I  said,  feeling  that  I  behaved  like  a  con- 
siderable idiot.  '  What  is  it  ?  ' 

She  opened  her  eyes  a  little,  and  murmured:  4  I've  taken 
something.' 

4  Taken  something  ? '  I  repeated,  vaguely  thinking  of  theft. 
4  What  do  you  mean  ?  Taken  something.' 

4  Poison,'  she  said.    Then  again :   '  Let  me  alone.' 

I  hear  the  shrillness  of  my  voice  as  I  cried  out :  4  Poison !  ' ; 
then  I  found  myself  hurrying  her  along  the  pavement.  *  What  is 
it  ?  '  I  said  to  her,  as  we  went.  4  Is  it  laudanum  ?  You've  got  to 
walk,  you  know,'  and  to  the  man :  *  Hurry  up.  Get  a  cab.'  There 
was  no  cab  to  be  seen.  4  Come  along!  '  I  shouted.  '  Run  ahead 
and  get  a  cab.'  After  a  moment's  hesitation  he  waddled  away, 
not  much  faster  than  we.  And  now  the  girl  was  almost  weeping, 
while  I  tortured  her  with  questions,  tried  to  make  her  run,  this 
one  idea  of  laudanum  in  my  mind.  At  last  she  answered :  4  Spirits 
of  salt.' 

It  took  us  very  long,  I  think,  to  get  up  North  Audley  Street, 
and  I  felt  rent  by  her  youth  and  her  prettiness,  for  the  fair  hair 
was  coming  unbound  on  my  shoulder.  There  was  a  tenderness 
in  me  as  I  lifted  her  at  last  into  the  cab.  I  remember  saying  to 
the  man,  4  You've  been  pretty  slow  about  it.  I  hope  you  haven't 
killed  her.  What  were  you  doing  staring  at  her  instead  of  doing 
something  ?  ' 

Then  he  said:   4  Oh,  well,  one  doesn't  want  to  be  mixed  up.' 

There  is  no  end  to  this  story.  I  took  her  to  the  Middlesex, 
56 


H 


O 


WANDERERS 

and  they  saved  her  by  means  of  the  stomach  pump :  to  this  day 
I  cannot  help  wishing  that  her  salvation  might  have  had  a  more 
romantic  name.  But  much  more  impressive  is  the  man's  remark. 
I  should  not  wonder  if  most  people  go  through  life  with  a  single 
end  in  view:  not  to  be  mixed  up.  And  one  might  as  well  be 
dead  as  not  be  mixed  up.  I  have  been  much  more  mixed  up  than 
I  dare  tell  in  this  respectable  volume.  I  stole  a  baby  once. 

That  is  the  story  of  *  The  Stolen  Baby  of  Pimlico.'  I  was 
waiting  for  an  omnibus  one  night  at  the  Chippenham.  A  young, 
dark  girl  was  also  waiting  for  the  omnibus,  but  as  she  was  showing 
more  signs  of  impatience  than  are  usual,  namely,  stamping,  I 
could  not  help  being  interested.  At  last,  as  she  passed  me  and 
flung  me  a  look  of  intense  malevolence,  which  I  felt  was  rather 
unfair,  I  could  not  help  smiling  and  saying:  *  I  wonder  whether 
there  are  any  more  buses/  (Now  I  come  to  think  of  it,  I  might 
have  said  something  more  soothing.)  This  had  the  unexpected 
result  of  arousing  confidence.  *  There's  got  to  be  another  bus,' 
she  said.  *  I've  got  to  fetch  my  sister's  baby.* 

'  Oh!  '  I  remarked. 

We  said  no  more  for  some  time,  and  still  no  omnibus  came. 
Then  a  taxi  crawled  up  to  us,  and  I  said :  *  Well,  if  there  are  no 
more  buses  we  had  better  take  this  taxi.'  The  dark  girl,  who  was 
young  and  very  pretty,  put  on  an  expression  of  increased  malevo- 
lence, but  as  I  stopped  the  taxi,  she  said :  *  Oh,  all  right  then,  but 
I  give  the  cabman  the  address,  and  not  you.'  As  we  sat  down, 
I  gathered  from  this  that  my  wanderer  was  no  fledgling.  But, 
after  a  few  minutes,  as  she  discovered  that  I  made  no  attempt  to 
kiss  her,  she  became  confidential.  She  had  run  away  from  an 
evil  stepmother.  She  had  £2  IDS.  She  had  just  taken  a  furnished 
flat  at  £3  i os.  a  week.  She  was  nineteen.  She  was  going  on  the 
stage.  Also,  she  wouldn't  have  gone  away  if  it  hadn't  been  for 
her  father.  (Rather  mixed,  this.)  As  we  drew  nearer  to  Pimlico 
I  became  more  and  more  confused,  for  the  baby  was  turning 
into  her  sister-in-law's  baby,  and  I  swear  that  he  became  a  she. 
We  stopped  in  a  little  black  street  in  Pimlico,  in  front  of  an 
enormous  Victorian  house  which  was  still  blacker  than  the  street. 
L.M.  E  57 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

*  I  must  ring,*  said  the  girl,  and  promptly  took  from  her  little  bag 
a  key.  Therefore  she  did  not  ring,  but  disappeared  into  the 
house,  the  inside  of  which  was  blacker  than  the  outside,  leaving 
the  door  wide  open.  After  I  had  waited  for  a  moment  she  came 
out  again:  '  I  say,'  she  said,  *  I  can't  carry  him  down;  he's  too 
heavy.' 

'  Oh,'  I  thought,  *  now  I'm  in  for  it.  But  they  can't  have 
laid  much  of  a  trap  for  a  young  man  picked  up  outside  the 
Chippenham.'  So,  true  to  my  principles,  I  went  in.  The  house 
stank  of  solitude.  It  was  the  sort  of  house  that  does  not  even 
creak.  I  felt  my  way  up  to  the  first  floor,  and  in  a  back  room 
where  there  was  very  little  besides  a  bed  and  a  couple  of  chairs, 
I  found  asleep  a  pretty  boy  aged  about  five.  '  Pick  him  up,' 
murmured  the  girl,  '  and  don't  make  a  noise,  I  don't  want  to 
wake  the  woman  so  late.'  Obediently  I  picked  him  up,  and 
carried  him  down  into  the  taxi.  Just  as  the  girl  was  about  to 
follow  me  in,  she  said:  'Now  I'd  better  pay  the  woman.  Lend 
me  two  shillings.'  In  a  few  moments  she  came  back,  and  some 
time  later  made  me  pull  up  the  taxi  at  the  corner  of  a  side  street, 
off  Elgin  Avenue. 

Only  later  did  all  these  confusions,  this  mixture  of  sexes  and 
relationships,  the  silence  in  the  silent  house,  lead  me  to  theories. 
Little  by  little  they  crystallised  into  this:  I  seem  to  have  stolen  a 
baby  I  don't  know,  belonging  to  somebody  I  don't  know,  and 
taken  it  I  don't  know  where,  in  the  charge  of  I  don't  know  whom. 
It  preyed  on  me  rather.  I  even  worked  up  an  alibi.  Now  I 
suppose  it  does  not  matter,  as  the  child  may  be  a  house- 
holder. 

There  are  many  other  stories  I  should  like  to  tell,  that  of 
4  The  Watchmaker  and  the  Four  Pounds  of  Black-Lead,'  though, 
really,  the  adventure  of  *  The  Two  Girls  from  County  Cork  and 
the  Lost  Camisole,'  is  much  more  remarkable,  but  these  and 
others  must  appear  in  another  volume.  There  are  many  of  these 
people,  and  one  never  discovers  them  before  ten  o'clock  or  so. 
They  live  in  the  streets,  where  they  have  their  loves  and  their 
tragedies,  and  mainly  in  those  places  where  there  is  not  too  much 
58 


WANDERERS 

light.  They  like  the  darkness  because  the  light  of  human  under- 
standing is  not  good  for  their  peculiar  affairs.  We  do  not  think 
enough  of  the  influence  of  light.  When  we  stand  on  Primrose 
Hill  and,  as  Karl  Baedeker  would  put  it,  behold  before  us  the 
rich  expanse  of  a  great  and  sleeping  city,  we  do  not  individualise 
the  lights  enough.  When  we  look  down  upon  Piccadilly 
Circus  flaring  from  every  veranda,  and,  like  the  laburnum, 
dropping  wells  of  fire,  when  in  these  days  we  stand  at  the  corner 
of  Tottenham  Court  Road  and  watch  the  electric  signs: 
'  Player's  Navy  Mixture,'  '  Meux's  London  Original  Stout,' 
*  Y.M.C.A.,'  and  *  Tube,'  when  we  walk  in  all  that  brightness, 
we  do  not  realise  that  this  is  the  spirit  of  our  city,  the  rather 
crude,  commercial,  and  friendly  spirit  of  London.  Nor,  in  other 
cities  at  night,  say  in  Birmingham,  where  through  the  dirty  glass 
falls  dirty  yellow  light,  do  we  perceive  in  man  unambitiousness. 
For  mankind  must  have  light.  Light  alone  opens  the  windows 
on  life,  and  makes  night  Arabian. 

Only  one  creature  likes  the  dark,  and  that  is  a  wanderer,  the 
cat.  Have  you  watched  cats  at  night  ?  If  you  try  in  the  street 
to  stroke  cats  when  the  mood  of  night  is  on  them,  when  they 
crouch  under  a  bush,  rolled  up  into  tight  balls,  their  sharp  heads 
sunk  into  the  woolly  folds  of  their  shoulders,  when  some  are 
shadows  in  the  shadow,  spotted  with  two  points  of  fire,  they 
will  not  shrink  from  you,  nor  approach  you,  but  so  remain  in 
static  life.  Or  they  will  swiftly  pass  you,  at  that  queer,  soft  trot, 
making  towards  a  secret  direction  with  entire  intentness.  Or, 
one  upon  the  steps  of  a  house,  the  other  on  a  balustrade,  they 
will  face  each  other  with  swishing  tails,  and  so  remain  in  immense 
motion  within  the  same  spot,  an  infinity  of  provocation  in  every 
shiver  of  their  sleek  flanks;  you,  human,  shall  not  know  whether 
they  are  minded  to  love  or  war.  If  you  interfere,  you  break  the 
spell  of  their  communication,  but  there  is  no  room  for  you  in 
their  compact.  You  are  the  spectre  of  the  commander,  and  they 
flee.  But  you  shall  feel  the  hostility  they  have  left  behind  them; 
it  flows  from  the  immense  cruelty  of  their  cold  eyes,  that  are  lovely 
as  emerald  and  topaz,  that  can  harbour  no  love,  but  only 

59 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

voluptuousness,  calm,  deep  eyes  that  calculate  and  fix  only  upon  that 
which  can  serve  them,  eyes  that  glimpse  only  things  they  fear 
and  things  they  desire,  not  things  for  which  they  may  suffer.  You 
shall  stay  awhile  in  that  hostile  ambiance,  while  they  have  fled 
into  the  night,  to  adventures  more  secret  and  profound  than  any 
that  may  be  yours,  even  though  you,  too,  be  one  of  Diana's  foresters, 
a  gentleman  of  the  shade,  a  minion  of  the  moon. 


60 


V 
SOUPS  AND  STEWS 


CHAPTER  V 

SOUPS    AND    STEWS 

IN  another  chapter  of  this  book  the  change  that  has  come  over 
London  feeding  has  already  been  indicated.  The  times  when 
respectability  edicted  that  one  should  eat  only  within  the  family 
circle,  when  all  that  could  be  obtained  abroad  was  a  stodgy  meal 
of  bread  and  cheese  at  a  coffee-house,  or  the  lightest  refreshment 
at  Vauxhall  or  Cremorne,  are  long  gone  by;  to-day,  almost  as 
many  meals  are  consumed  at  restaurants  as  under  homely  roofs. 
It  was  a  long  battle  the  restaurants  waged  under  the  early  banners 
of  Hatchett's  or  the  Cafe  Royal  and,  strange  to  say,  the  Grand 
Hotel.  Yes,  once  upon  a  time  the  Grand  Hotel,  that  ancestor, 
was  the  latest  thing;  in  the  eighties  it  was  '  the  thing  '  to  lunch 
or  stay  at  the  Grand  Hotel.  But,  in  those  days,  '  the  thing  '  was 
rather  a  scandalous  thing,  and  if  one  lunched  or  dined  away  from 
home  one  felt  dissipated;  one  had  to  choose  one's  company  when 
taking  a  meal  thus,  for  the  worst  was  easily  thought  of  one  in  1880, 
while  to-day,  the  best  is  hoped  for.  (There  is,  perhaps,  no  great 
difference  between  the  two  attitudes.) 

In  those  days  the  home  was  a  British  institution;  it  figured 
in  the  solemn  list  which  numbered  suet  pudding,  the  royal  family, 
bustles,  Tennyson,  the  evangelical  attitude,  and  chenille  decoration 
of  mantelpieces.  The  home  had  its  rights;  indeed,  it  had  all 
rights;  it  was  the  place  where  you  ought  to  want  to  be,  and  far 
from  which  you  would  naturally  feel  remorse;  it  was  the  thing 
you  had  to  *  keep  together,'  the  thing  you  had  to  *  make,'  to 
'  save  ';  your  self-abnegation  should  have  told  you  that  you  had 
no  rights  except  to  add  the  pillar  of  your  person  to  those  of  the 
porch.  It  has  gone,  this  Victorian  rectitude;  it  has  gone  the  way 
of  Dundreary  whiskers  and  of  weepers  round  the  hat;  I  suspect 
that  the  restaurant  habit,  as  it  is  called,  has  turned  some  of  the 
sods  for  its  grave.  There  is  something  relaxing  in  a  restaurant, 
at  least  to  a  people  such  as  ours,  afflicted  with  a  considerable 
sense  of  private  licence  and  of  public  dignity.  Restaurant  dining 

63 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

outrages  in  us  a  sort  of  modesty,  and,  like  most  Puritans,  we 
rather  enjoy  having  our  modesty  outraged;  it  is  the  revenge  of 
the  flesh,  and  it  pleases  us  godly  men  to  discover  in  ourselves  a 
streak  of  the  devil.  We  feel  this  rather  more  in  the  foreign 
restaurants  than  in  the  British;  in  the  British  eating-houses, 
where  there  is  no  menu,  but  only  a  bill  of  fare,  where  understand- 
able things,  such  as  mock-turtle  soup,  boiled  mutton  with  caper 
sauce,  and  roly-poly  are  offered  us,  we  know  too  well  where  we 
are;  we  eat,  instead  of  giving  way  to  greediness;  by  avoiding 
that  temptation  we  avoid  one  of  the  cardinal  sins,  and  more's  the 
pity.  In  foreign  restaurants,  however,  where  neither  the  name 
of  the  dish  nor  the  form  it  assumes  is  understandable,  we  can 
develop  a  sense  of  sin ;  we  can  do  this  because  our  feet  are  set  on 
foreign  ways,  all  of  which  lead  to  Babylon.  Foreign  waiters 
address  us,  and  there  is  no  virtue  in  their  eyes;  they  look  like 
assassins,  and  it  is  thrilling  to  think  that  they  may  be  assassins, 
or  nihilists,  or  grand-dukes.  Foreigners  dine  at  the  tables;  their 
women  are  too  smart  to  be  good;  the  yellow-backed  novels  they 
bring  in  must  surely  be  undesirable;  they  are  poorly  clad,  which 
proves  that  they  lead  sinful  lives;  they  are  richly  dressed,  which 
points  to  evil  courses.  They  are  foreign.  Is  not  the  Drury  Lane 
villain  foreign  ? 

From  this  sense  of  sin  arose  in  the  beginning  the  popularity 
of  the  Soho  restaurants.  I  do  not  know  when  they  began  to  be 
popular.  Some,  such  as  the  Restaurant  d'ltalie,  the  Monico, 
the  Villa  Villa,  are  old  stagers,  but  when  I  first  came  to  town 
their  customers  were  mostly  men ;  if  couples  came  they  generally 
included  a  man  who  did  not  care  to  take  his  womenkind  to  such 
places,  but  did  not  mind  taking  other  people's  womenkind. 
(Thus  it  worked  out  just  the  same  in  the  end.)  The  growth  of 
London,  which  compelled  men  to  live  farther  and  farther  out, 
favoured  the  restaurants,  for  distant  dormitories  drive  men  to 
proximate  refectories.  The  Soho  restaurant  grew  in  numbers, 
together  with  the  Cabins,  the  Lyons's,  the  J.P.'s,  and  others,  but 
at  the  same  time,  because  they  provided  pleasant  fare  at  low  prices, 
they  gained  advertisement  from  the  men  who  first  frequented 
64 


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SOUPS         AND          STEWS 

them.  Thus  the  women  heard  of  them,  and  they  liked  them 
immensely,  for  the  Soho  restaurant  provides  exactly  the  sort  of 
meal  that  many  women  want:  next  to  nothing,  pleasantly  served. 
So,  in  the  last  dozen  years,  they  have  prospered  enormously; 
the  early  ones,  such  as  Brice's,  Le  Diner  Fran^ais,  Au  Petit  Riche, 
found  many  rivals  such  as  the  Moulin  d'Or,  the  Mont  Blanc, 
Chantecler,  Maxim's,  the  Rendezvous,  etc.  Their  career  has 
been  curiously  uniform.  Nearly  all  have  been  started  by  a  chef, 
a  waiter  who  had  saved  up  a  small  working  capital  or  married 
well.  Being  foreigners,  the  proprietors  liked  good  cooking,  and 
in  the  beginning  every  Soho  restaurant  offered  a  good  meal. 
To-day  there  are  still  a  few  where  the  proprietor  circulates  among 
the  tables,  asking  you  whether  you  are  satisfied,  and  naively  begs 
congratulation,  but  that  state  of  mind  is  rare.  So  long  as  the 
customers  were  mainly  foreign,  the  standard  was  kept  up:  small, 
important,  subtle  things  were  done,  such  as  steaming  vegetables 
instead  of  boiling  them,  such  as  putting  in  salt  while  the  meat 
cooked.  But  the  Englishmen  who  came  to  lunch,  having  adver- 
tised their  wonderful  find,  grew  very  proud  of  it,  began  to  bring 
their  friends,  their  sisters,  and,  nowadays,  even  their  aunts.  They 
came  in  increasing  numbers,  and  the  proprietors  discovered 
three  things:  that  there  were  in  London  more  Londoners  than 
foreigners;  that  the  Londoners  were  willing  to  pay  more  than 
the  foreigners;  that  they  either  didn't  know  what  they  ate,  or 
that  they  didn't  care.  As  very  few  of  the  proprietors  were  in 
business  as  artists;  as,  moreover,  they  grew  discouraged  when 
they  went  round  the  tables  and  asked  people  whether  they  had 
enjoyed  the  stuffed  mushrooms  and  were  asked:  '  Were  they 
stuffed  ?  '  they  ceased  to  take  pains.  They  found  out  what  the 
English  customer  wanted:  paper  flowers  on  the  tables,  Japanese 
fans,  and  dishes  with  incomprehensible  names.  So,  one  after 
the  other,  they  began  to  cater  for  a  purely  English  clientele;  a  good 
many  have  discovered  that  the  English  customers  expect  made- 
up  meats  instead  of,  say,  roast  beef,  and  are  willing  to  take  those 
meats  on  trust;  so  the  wise  proprietor,  in  many  cases,  makes  up 
his  menu  from  the  dishes  left  over  from  the  night  before  at  the 

65 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

Carlton  or  the  Ritz.  After  all,  he  gives  them  what  they  want: 
a  dissipated  atmosphere.  Not  long  ago,  I  watched  four  school 
mistresses  in  a  state  of  considerable  dissipation.  They  sat  in  the 
little  restaurant,  laughing  rather  more  shrilly  than  they  would 
have  at  Simpson's,  as  if  excited  by  the  rather  excessive  effect  of 
prettiness,  the  mauve  walls,  the  blue  and  yellow  curtains,  the 
pretty  fringed  shades.  Oh,  how  one  understood  Sally  Bishop! 
How  the  mellow  spirit  of  Mr  Temple  Thurston  brooded  with 
folded  wings  over  the  little  place!  The  school  mistresses  listened 
hungrily  for  French,  which  was  being  spoken  by  the  attendants, 
and  they  kept  a  wary  eye  upon  their  fellow  lunchers :  sober  couples 
drinking  claret;  young  men  and  women,  the  latter  unpowdered, 
the  former  oppressed  by  sartorial  self-righteousness.  There 
was  nothing  against  the  lunch;  it  was  a  nice,  ordinary  little  lunch; 
the  sort  of  well-cooked  little  lunch  that  could  be  turned  out  by 
the  gross,  out  of  a  machine,  all  the  year  round,  every  little  lunch 
alike,  for  ever  and  ever.  But  my  school  mistresses  were  tasting 
dissipation  while  avoiding  vice. 

In  true  cooking  one  does  not  avoid  vice.  One  courts  vice. 
One  says:  *  Eating  is  a  sensuality,  and  we  shall  satisfy  our  senses 
as  much  as  we  can.  We  shall  sing  hymns  to  it;  people  have  sung 
hymns  to  drinking,  why  not  to  eating  ?  We  are  not  ashamed  of 
"  feasting  "  our  eyes  and  our  ears;  why  not  our  palates  ?  '  Some 
people  understand  this.  Mr  Anatole  France  sums  it  up  well 
when  analysing  a  Castelnaudary  stew: — 

'  The  Castelnaudary  stew  contains  the  preserved  thighs  of 
geese,  whitened  beans,  bacon,  and  a  little  sausage.  To  be  good 
it  must  have  been  cooked  lengthily  upon  a  gentle  fire.  Clemence's 
stew  has  been  cooking  for  twenty  years.  She  puts  into  the  stew 
sometimes  goose  or  bacon,  sometimes  sausage  or  beans,  but  it  is 
always  the  same  stew.  The  foundation  endures;  this  ancient 
and  precious  foundation  gives  the  stew  the  quality  that  in  the 
picture  of  old  Venetian  masters  you  find  in  the  women's  amber 
flesh.' 

If  you  are  a  proper  person  you  will  call  this  disgusting;  you 
will  feel  that  this  is  an  indecent  subject,  and  that  an  author  who 
66 


SOUPS          AND          STEWS 

dares  to  head  his  chapter  *  Soups  and  Stews  '  ought  in  another 
world  to  be  chained  for  a  thousand  years  to  the  ghost  of  Colonel 
Newnham  Davis.  That  is  a  legacy  of  the  past;  not  more  than 
twenty  years  ago  it  was  indeed  indecent  to  discuss  food,  and  if  a 
vulgarian  did  so,  the  only  thing  the  lady  of  the  house  could  reply 
was:  '  Oh,  really!  '  The  war  has  altered  that,  and  I  am  inclined 
to  hope  that  people  who  endlessly  discussed  the  difference  between 
butter  and  margarine,  the  advantages  to  be  found  in  neck  of 
mutton,  will  maintain  these  not  ignoble  preoccupations.  I  believe 
they  will,  for  they  were  moving  that  way;  they  had  already  left 
far  behind  the  Victorian  lady  with  a  wasp  waist  who  *  daintily 
pecked  at  her  dinner  like  a  little  bird.'  They  may  one  day  adopt 
Brillat-Savarin's  dictum :  *  Let  me  cook  your  ministers'  dishes, 
and  they  will  give  you  good  laws.' 

But,  leaving  aside  Soho,  which  is,  after  all,  only  the  culinary 
frontier,  we  find  that  the  restaurant  has  spread  over  the  whole  of 
London,  carrying  everywhere  its  gospel  of  satisfaction.  This 
gospel  takes  various  forms,  for  restaurants  fall  into  different 
classes  according  to  their  locality  and  their  prices.  There  are  the 
pompous,  like  the  Carlton,  the  Savoy,  the  Popular  Cafe;  there 
are  the  distinguished,  such  as  Claridge's,  Jules's,  Dieudonne*'s ; 
there  are  the  fanciful,  such  as  Pagani,  Verrey's,  old  Gambrinus, 
Bellomo's,  Gustave,  the  Savoyard,  the  Chinese,  the  Japanese, 
the  Greek;  there  is  the  slab-of-meat  class,  such  as  Gatti's, 
Simpson's,  to  say  nothing  of  the  Shepherd's  Bush  Restaurant, 
and  the  Tulse  Hill  Hotel ;  above  all  there  is  the  restaurant  of  the 
Joseph  Lyons  civilisation,  the  Strand  Palace  Hotel,  the  Regent 
Palace,  the  Strand  Corner  House. 

They  all  deserve  their  little  word,  and  it  is  difficult  to  say  of 
each  of  them  just  what  should  be  said,  because  they  have  so  much 
in  common,  yet  are  so  far  apart,  like  brothers  and  sisters.  There 
is  a  flavour  of  Joseph  Lyons  at  the  Savoy,  while  Gatti  has  Reggiori 
for  a  little  relative.  Yet,  when  one  comes  to  know  them  well, 
they  are  all  so  different.  No  one,  for  instance,  could  mistake  the 
Carlton  for  the  Savoy;  both  have  a  broad  spaciousness  born  of 
their  size,  of  the  comparative  expensiveness  of  their  meats; 

67 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

both  arc  lofty  and  white  and  clean;  their  glass  is  pretty  good, 
and  their  plate  so-so.  But  while  the  Carlton  maintains  a  certain 
air  of  having  selected  from  among  the  not  very  select,  the  Savoy 
shows  little  sign  of  having  tried  that  much.  To  lunch  at  the 
Savoy  makes  one  feel  not  so  much  that  one  is  among  the  rich  as 
among  the  well-to-do  on  short  leave.  The  Savoy  is  sober;  its 
luxury  is  quieter  than  that  of  the  Joseph  Lyons  restaurant;  in  a 
way,  with  its  top  lights,  its  flowers,  it  recalls  the  Joseph  Lyons 
civilisation;  the  flowers  are  real,  but  not  much  more  so;  the 
band  is  more  discreet,  but  it  plays  the  same  tunes.  Its  population, 
too,  is  different;  at  the  Savoy,  you  do  not  see  the  young  clerk, 
but  you  do  see  what  some  of  the  young  clerks  will  become  if  they 
are  lucky;  many  foreigners  in  a  state  of  gormandise  and  bejewel- 
ment;  rather  dowdy  people,  too,  the  well-off  dowdy,  whose 
sideboards  must  be  taken  to  pieces  before  they  can  be  got  into 
country  cottages.  The  business  element  is  strong.  Somehow, 
one  tells  a  business  man  fairly  easily;  he  wears  good  clothes  that 
nearly  fit  him;  his  hair  is  well  cut,  his  cheek  is  well  shaved,  but 
a  consciousness  of  the  barber's  art  hangs  about  his  head;  his 
elegance  is  not  a  natural  product,  it  is  one  of  the  goods  which  he 
produces;  he  misses  '  the  line  '  which  some  sediment  of  aristocracy 
or  musical-comedy  upstart  achieves  better  than  will  ever  the 
business  man's  solidities.  There  is  too  much  meat  upon  his 
cheeks;  you  feel  that  he  is  a  little  too  rich,  just  as  his  eyes  are  a 
little  too  bright;  he  is  like  a  very  new  knife  that  has  not  yet  learned 
to  cut. 

Others,  too,  Americans,  who  are  happier  in  those  big  hotels 
than  any  of  the  English,  because  hotel-life  is,  in  many  of  them, 
an  acquired  characteristic.  They  are  interesting,  those  Savoy 
Americans,  abundant  women,  exquisite  girls  made  of  beautifully 
tinted  steel-plate,  those  men  with  the  square  shoulders,  square 
chins,  square  heads,  cubic  cheeks;  you  know,  without  being 
told,  that  they  are  connected  with  the  cinema  trade,  or  that  they 
are  producing  a  play  by  Mr  Montague  Glass  or  Mr  Bayard  Veiller, 
or  that  they  are  selling  many  motor-cars,  or  something  like  that. 
(The  American  who  comes  to  Europe  for  the  purpose  of  exporting 
68 


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SOUPS         AND          STEWS 

art  to  Pittsburg  is  not  found  at  the  Savoy;  he  goes  to  Chelsea 
and  Fitzroy  Square.)  And  yet  it  is  not  a  disagreeable  place;  its 
breadth,  the  airy  width  of  plate-glass  that  looks  out  upon  the 
Thames,  the  cheapness  and  the  adequacy  of  its  food,  all  these 
are  part  of  the  new  restaurant  of  the  new  civilisation,  which  has 
replaced  the  little  taverns  in  the  little  corners  of  the  town.  It  is 
no  use  being  sentimental  over  the  little  restaurant,  or,  indeed, 
over  anything  little:  there  are  too  many  of  us  for  anything  little 
to  be  much  more  than  a  survival.  If  restaurants  did  not  feed  us 
a  thousand  at  a  time,  they  would  never  manage  to  feed  us  all. 

One  thinks  of  that  in  the  small  restaurants  that  have  survived, 
such  as  Verrey's.  To  many  people  it  seems  a  queer  thing  to 
lunch  at  Verrey's ;  it  seems  rather  out  of  date,  and,  indeed,  when 
one  approaches  that  frontage,  painted  a  sort  of  faded  1850  blue 
and  provided  with  coloured  glass,  one  has  a  sense  of  antiquity. 
Inside  antiquity  is  still  more  striking,  for  the  big,  square  room 
under  the  skylight  manages  at  the  same  time  to  be  drab  in  colour 
and  Moorish  Gothic  in  architecture.  It  still  has  the  many  mirrors 
of  the  'fifties,  an  air  of  being  comfortably  off  enough  to  afford  to 
be  dowdy.  Rakish  and  dowdy!  Can  anything  better  translate 
the  amusements  of  two  generations  ago  ?  To-day,  Verrey's  gives 
you  a  fair  lunch,  and  at  its  caf£  tables,  which  are  somehow  more 
substantial  than  the  cafe  tables  of  Paris,  you  understand  what 
England  thought  the  Continent  must  be  like  in  the  days  of  the 
Grand  Tour. 

There  are  other  places,  fanciful  as  Verrey's.  There  is  Bellomo's, 
in  Jermyn  Street,  a  modest,  pleasant  little  place,  a  long,  narrow 
back  room  filled  with  agreeable  young  couples.  Bellomo's  is 
rather  like  a  young-old  man,  with  its  panelled  wainscoting,  its 
wallpaper  of  faded  gold,  and  its  moulded,  early  Victorian  frieze. 
There  is  something  solid  about  its  dumb  waiters;  Bellomo's  is 
somehow  benevolent. 

But  then  Verrey's  and  Bellomo's  are  within  limited  flights  of 
fancy.  The  curious  gastronome  will,  in  London,  easily  find  queerer 
places  and  foods.  At  Pagani's  he  can  come  to  understand  that 
risotto  may  well  be  eaten  in  Valhalla;  at  Gambrinus's,  the  Regent 

69 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

Street  one,  of  course,  he  could,  before  the  war,  when  it  was  German, 
find  unexpected  delight  in  liver-sausage  sandwiches,  with  perfectly 
sour  gherkins,  and,  heaven  of  heavens,  really  cold  beer.  In  those 
days  it  was  decorated  with  antlers,  enormous  fanciful  jugs,  out 
of  which  you  enormously  drank  the  frozen  gold  of  that  beer. 
I  think  it  has  become  Belgian  since  the  war;  I  am  not  quite  sure, 
for  I  went  there  only  once  after  the  transfer. 

But  the  truly  curious  go  not  to  foreigners  like  Pagani  or 
Gambrinus,  or  even  to  Gustave,  where  the  foods  are  truly  French, 
or  to  the  Savoyard,  where  they  are  French  and  eatable  under  the 
eye  of  strange  pictures ;  the  truly  curious  go  not  to  the  foreigner, 
but  to  the  professional  foreigner,  to  restaurants  such  as  the  Greek, 
the  Chinese,  or  the  Japanese.  Of  these  the  Chinese  is  the  most 
attractive.  I  mean  the  Cathay,  next  door  to  the  Monico,  not  the 
Chinese  restaurants  in  Limehouse,  where  nothing  is  eatable,  and 
nothing  is  tragic,  and  nothing  is  coloured,  let  Mr  Thomas  Burke 
say  what  he  likes.  A  lunch  at  the  Chinese  restaurant  is  really  an 
adventure,  for  nearly  all  the  dishes  are  made  of  the  same  things, 
and  yet  they  all  taste  different.  There  is  an  admirable  dish, 
hang-yang-kai-ting,  made  of  fried  chicken  with  almonds  and 
bamboo  shoots.  That  is  a  simple  one,  and  the  curious  will  find 
more  profit  in  a  dish  the  name  of  which  I  have  forgotten,  which 
contains  fried  sliced  pork,  celery,  beans,  sprouts,  mushrooms, 
bamboo  shoots,  and  green  chutney.  Eat  that,  and  it  is  a  very 
large,  overflowing,  savoury  portion;  flavour  it  well  with  chop- 
suey  (which  you  can  call  liquid  salt  if  you  are  a  foreign  devil). 
Eat  it  immediately  after  chicken  liver  soup,  and  if  you  do  not 
forget  before  swallowing  the  bamboo  shoots  to  chew,  and  chew, 
and  chew,  then  a  true  mellowness  will  be  known  to  you.  Also, 
do  not  forget  the  great  bowl  of  boiled  rice,  pure,  white  rice, 
perfectly  dried,  not  sticky  rice  a  la  A.B.C.y  but  rice  where  every 
grain  remembers  that  it  has  a  personality.  Don't  ask  for  chop- 
sticks: the  best  people  in  China  do  not  use  chopsticks;  they  use 
forks.  (There  used  to  be  a  Chinese  restaurant  where  they  provided 
chopsticks  for  the  English;  it  was  great  fun  watching  them  pour 
their  food  down  their  sleeves  with  that  conscious  air  of  duty  that 
70 


SOUPS          AND          STEWS 

seems  to  overwhelm  the  Englishman  experiencing  pleasure.)  And 
don't  forget  dessert,  ginger  in  syrup,  fire  in  the  midst  of  sweet- 
ness, like  a  red-haired  girl;  and  ly-chee,  large,  sweet,  white  nuts 
in  an  opalescent  syrup,  extraordinarily  good. 

But,  in  a  way,  all  those  places,  the  very  rich  and  the  very  odd, 
are  running  on  tifieir  own  ticket,  and  do  not  express  the  times  in 
which  we  live.  Our  modern  times  are  the  Strand  Corner  House. 
I  should  not  wonder  if  many  of  my  readers  had  never  been  into 
the  Strand  Corner  House;  that  is,  if  they  are  incurious  of  life. 
If  they  repent  their  acceptance  of  things  as  they  are,  they  will  find 
an  unexpectedly  large  building  decorated  with  heavily  flowered 
stucco  mouldings,  with  plate-glass,  with  stained  glass,  with  panels 
of  crimson  satin.  They  will  find  light,  co-operative  luxury; 
superposed  tiers,  bearing  crowds  of  people  lunching  on  the  top 
of  one  another's  heads,  and  at  the  bottom  of  a  deep  well,  a  band 
that  can  be  heard  above  the  clatter  of  twelve  hundred  pairs  of 
jaws.  A  thousand  people  at  a  time  really  eat  all  together 
at  the  Strand  Corner  House,  and,  in  a  way,  no  wonder. 
The  place  is  quite  clean,  not  offensive  in  its  appurtenances,  and 
can  supply  three  courses  for  less  than  two  shillings;  the  music 
is  the  ordinary  dance  or  sentimental  music,  the  sort  that  makes 
you  feel  friendly  or  affectionate  as  required.  The  public  of  the 
Strand  Corner  House  is,  therefore,  the  world.  Its  variety  is 
much  greater  than  that  of  any  other  place.  One  might  think  that 
this  public  would  consist  exclusively  of  flappers  and  their  escorts, 
and,  indeed,  the  flapper  is  prevalent,  though  she  comes  in  threes 
and  fours  quite  as  much  as  more  ostentatiously  with  a  '  boy.' 
Also  the  suburbs,  middle-aged  couples,  when  the  wife  has  been 
shopping  in  St  Paul's  Churchyard  and  has  strayed  down  the 
Strand;  unexpectedly  you  see  people  with  an  air  of  modish  vanity, 
dashing  people  who  smoke  cigarettes  and  drink  claret,  damning 
both  the  expense  and  the  consequences.  Though  very  few  of 
the  frequenters  could  be  mistaken  for  members  of  the  classes, 
none  are  members  of  the  masses;  they  seem  to  be  in  a  state  of 
social  suspension ;  they  are,  especially  the  girls,  of  a  rather  crystal- 
line type.  I  mean  that  you  realise  their  good  looks  at  once  instead 

71 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

of  by  degrees.  If  you  look  about  you,  you  will  not  fail  to  find 
half  a  dozen  faces  that  can  give  you  the  knock  .  .  .  only,  if  you 
look  round  the  other  way,  you  will  probably  see  another  half  a 
dozen  faces  that  can  give  you  exactly  the  same  knock,  and  when 
one  is  an  old  Londoner  and  has  been  getting  the  knock  all  one's 
life,  well,  one  unfortunately  comes  to  stand  it  rather  well. 

These  great  crowds  of  young  people  with  a  little  money  in 
their  pocket  and  much  zest  in  their  hearts  tend  to  fall  into  uniform 
types.  The  men  nearly  all  buy  their  collars  at  the  Regent  Street 
branches  of  city  hosiers;  the  girls  seem  to  skim  the  lighter  froth 
of  the  big  West  End  stores,  except  that  Marshall's  knows  them 
not.  This  produces  a  uniform  quality:  they  have  to  overtake 
the  fashions,  and  so  become  a  little  outrees. 

Women,  more  readily  than  men,  respond  to  the  stratifications 
of  restaurants,  because  they  are  more  adaptable.  Their  very 
clothes  show  it;  women  are  like  cats,  they  have  no  bones,  and 
easily  suit  themselves  to  bell-mouthed  skirt  or  hobble.  The 
female  form  is  infinitely  squashable  and  extensible;  any  fashion 
can  transform  it,  and  if  a  woman  has  the  wit  to  shun  the  becoming, 
she  can  always  be  in  the  fashion  if  she  dares.  If  she  fails,  it  is 
because  she  does  not  dare  to  underline  her  deficiency.  If  I  were 
a  woman  and  extraordinarily  tall,  I  should  dress  myself  in  vertical 
stripes;  if  I  were  very  short  and  very  stout,  I  should  insert  the 
hoops  of  barrels  under  my  skirt;  I  should  be  hideous,  but  I  should 
be  It,  for  the  essence  of  true  fashion  is  extremism.  I  said  fashion, 
not  elegance;  that  is  quite  another  story,  but  then,  to  be  elegant 
you  must  be  born  as  the  greyhound,  and  if  you  strive  to  elegance 
you  are  more  likely  to  resemble  the  mouse.  Fashion  is  much 
easier. 

Not  only  in  her  clothes,  but  in  herself,  does  the  metropolitan 
girl  define  her  city.  She  is  always  the  creature  of  the  day,  who 
heavily  overlays  the  creature  of  all  time.  In  soups  and  stews  she 
has  little  part,  for  a  woman  is  a  poor  partner  at  the  table.  She 
eats  and  drinks,  as  a  rule,  without  much  science  or  much  intent- 
ness;  she  eats  too  little,  she  bolts;  she  does  not  realise  that  she  is 
doing  something  important  and  artistic.  Oh,  it  is  not  that  she 
72 


SHOPPING 


To  face  page  75 


SOUPS         AND          STEWS 

is  lifted  high  above  material  desires,  for,  indeed,  certain  articles 
of  food,  such  as  chocolates,  certain  drinks,  such  as  liqueurs,  make 
her  accept  the  society  of  the  dullest  and  the  most  dreary,  but 
such  trifles  are  merely  the  preludes  and  the  coronals  of  the  true 
soup  and  the  true  stew.  Still,  she  is  the  decoration  and  the  charm 
of  the  table;  when  Mr  Lauzerte  said  that  where  there  are  no 
women  there  is  no  true  elegance,  he  was  speaking  the  truth.  In 
matters  of  food  they  care  very  little  what  it  is  and  very  much  what 
it  looks.  Also,  because  few  of  them  neglect  an  advantage  and 
prove  the  old  adage  that  what  woman  most  desires  is  mastery 
over  man,  they  never  ignore  what  they  look  upon  as  a  gross  means 
of  seduction.  It  was  a  woman,  I  think,  who  told  another  to  *  feed 
the  brute.'  What  an  illusion!  If  you  have  to  deal  with  a  brute, 
indeed,  you  can  keep  him  quiet  by  feeding  him,  just  as  you  mollify 
Cerberus  with  a  sop,  but  to  keep  a  man  quiet  .  .  .  how  un- 
necessary in  the  early  days  of  marriage!  and  how  disastrous  after! 
It  is  unconsciously,  I  think,  that  women  strive  to  please  the  palate 
of  men,  that  is  they  are  unconscious  of  the  effects  of  such  a  course. 
Unless  they  are  very  unhappy  they  do  not  want  to  soothe  the 
sullen  creature;  they  wish  to  produce  in  him  a  light  and  airy 
grace,  a  not  very  promising  ambition.  For  some  men,  who  are 
in  possession  of  all  their  senses,  will  feel  true  gratitude,  which 
is  akin  to  love,  to  the  one  who  knows  how  so  to  flatter  them.  One 
of  them  said  to  me  not  long  ago :  '  It  makes  the  day  easier  to  feel 
that  I  shall  go  back  to-night  to  a  perfectly  cooked  meal,  and  a 
perfectly  dressed  wife.'  I  am  not  quite  sure  whether  he  said  that, 
or  whether  it  was  '  a  perfectly  dressed  wife,  and  a  perfectly  cooked 
meal,'  but  anyhow,  it  does  not  matter,  for  in  that  man's  mind  the 
two  delights  had  grown  mixed.  That  is  what  every  woman  knows, 
and  perhaps  she  is  wise  as  well  as  humble  in  hoping  to  mingle 
with  the  Dotage  veloute  some  of  the  old  philtres  of  love. 


L.M.  F  73 


VI 
IN  SEARCH  OF  VICE 


CHAPTER  VI 

IN    SEARCH    OF    VICE 

WHEN  I  first  came  to  London  I  was  twenty  years  old;  I  came 
from  Paris,  and,  being  twenty,  felt  sure  that  there  remained  no 
sensations  for  me  to  experience,  no  realms  of  passion  to  explore. 
I  felt  that  I  had  lived — well,  lived;  that  I  came  from  Babylon 
city,  and  was  now  entering  a  Puritanic  world,  a  place  of  dignities 
and  parliaments,  of  clergymen  with  white  bibs,  of  ladies  with 
prominent  teeth  and  elastic-sided  boots  who  said  *  shocking ' ; 
I  also  felt  that  I  was  entering  the  country  of  le  sport,  le  flirt\  I 
had  also  been  told  that  the  English  were  a  strange  people,  adepts 
in  every  depravity,  of  which  the  secret  drinking  of  methylated 
spirits  was  a  minor  example.  I  admired  them  thoroughly,  as  I 
admired  Westminster  Abbey.  Briefly,  a  land  of  virtue.  This 
state  of  mind  was  fairly  well  kept  up  for  the  first  year,  because  it 
rained  nearly  all  the  time,  and  there  is  nothing  like  a  rainy  summer 
to  raise  the  moral  tone  of  the  streets.  I  was  interested  by  the 
life  I  saw  round  me,  bored  by  the  life  I  led  on  thirty-eight  shillings 
a  week ;  I  could  afford  little  in  the  way  of  theatres ;  whisky  made 
me  sick;  so  did  Irish  stew  and  suet  pudding;  I  did  not  see  as 
much  of  my  fellows  as  I  wanted,  because,  in  those  days,  I  often  had 
to  choose  between  a  clean  shirt  in  the  evening,  and  a  cut  from 
the  joint  at  lunch.  Also,  my  landlady  washed  the  collie  in  the 
bath,  which  annoyed  me. 

It  is  not  surprising,  then,  that  I  did  not  at  once  enter  London's 
'  gilded  haunts  of  vice.'  It  took  me  a  little  time  to  discover  them, 
and,  to  |pe  truthful,  I  am  still  looking  for  them.  Indeed,  I  can 
say  that  I  have  employed  a  considerable  portion  of  the  last  eighteen 
years  in  search  of  vice,  and  it  may  be  that  I  must  blame  a  Parisian 
education  for  my  disappointment.  I  thought  I  had  found  vice 
the  first  time  I  saw  a  couple  publicly  embrace,  opposite  Marble 
Arch,  never  having  seen  anything  so  indecent  in  a  Continental 
city;  but  this  was  an  illusion,  just  like  another  illusion  when,  for 
the  first  time,  I  heard  a  speaker  in  the  Park  state  his  true  opinion 

77 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

of  the  Royal  Family:  I  thought  this  was  the  beginning  of  the 
revolution,  and  could  not  understand  why  the  police  looked  so 
bored.  I  do  now,  for  I  suppose  that  meetings  have  been  going 
on  for  several  generations.  But  when  it  came  to  vice,  when  I 
explained  to  my  new  and  fast  English  friends  that  I  was  looking 
for  vice,  when  they  took  me  to  the  old  Empire  Promenade,  when 
they  bade  me  be  shocked  at  the  condition  of  Regent  Street,  between 
Vigo  Street  and  Piccadilly  Circus,  when  they  took  me  to  Earl's 
Court  to  ogle  and  to  drink  milk-coffee,  when  they  drew  my 
attention  to  the  chorus  girls  performing  what  they  called  orgies 
in  the  punts  near  Maidenhead,  a  certain  melancholy  crept  over 
me.  English  vice  was  overrated.  Indeed,  to  this  day,  I  am  sure 
that  there  is  very  little  vice  in  England,  that  the  Londoner,  parti- 
cularly, is  a  flighty  creature,  who  kills  virtue  with  his  mouth,  who  tells 
unpleasant  stories  about  the  deeds  of  other  people,  and  paints  the 
town  red  with  the  assistance  of  his  fancy  socks.  They  are  cowards, 
really,  and  most  of  them,  when  they  slip  at  all,  seem  to  slip  ignobly 
into  the  rare  satisfaction  of  a  purely  animal  instinct;  also,  to  do  this, 
they  need  drink.  Nero  would  not  have  understood  them  at  all. 

Since  those  days  much  time  has  passed,  and  now  and  then, 
here  and  there,  I  have  come  a  little  closer  to  those  strange  and 
secret  depravities  of  which,  according  to  the  Continent,  London 
holds  the  monopoly.  The  newspapers  are  helpful;  for  they 
have  occasional  fits  of  virtue  and  begin  to  expose  something, 
thus,  at  last,  giving  it  an  advertisement;  or  the  police  intervene 
and  shut  up  a  restaurant,  thus  focusing  all  eyes  upon  its  pro- 
prietor and  making  him  so  famous  that  when  he  opens  another 
restaurant  next  door  he  is  assured  of  custom.  And  so  I  have 
known  dreadful  places,  manicure  shops  where  hands  were  held 
longer  than  filing  demands,  tea  shops  where  the  depraved  waitresses 
call  you  *  old  dear,'  and  demonstrate  that  in  a  chair  when  there  is 
room  for  one  there  is  room  for  two.  It  is  perfectly  appalling. 
I  have  been  to  the  old  Continental  and  to  the  old  Globe  Restaurant 
to  spend  considerable  sums  on  not  very  satisfactory  meals,  to  see 
a  number  of  ladies  manifest  a  little  more  clearly  than  is  the  custom 
the  liberalism  of  their  mind.  I  don't  know  why  it  strikes  the 
78 


IN        SEARCH        OF        VICE 

Puritan  faction  as  so  terrible  that  the  women  whom  they  call  lost 
should  congregate  in  a  particular  place;  it  cannot  be  because 
thus  they  can  be  found,  for  the  Puritans  must  know  that  there  is 
no  street  in  central  London,  no  tube,  no  omnibus,  which  does 
not  hold  as  much  temptation  and  as  much  opportunity  as  a  small 
room  in  a  quiet  restaurant.  I  suppose  it  is  the  openness  of  the 
thing  shocks  them,  the  fact  that  they  cannot  cover  it  up  and, 
therefore,  pretend  it  is  not  there.  But  if  that  is  vice,  if  that  is 
*  the  smirch  on  our  fair  escutcheon,'  then,  indeed,  must  English 
prudery  be  easily  offended.  It  must  be  a  sensitive  prudery,  for 
it  cried  out  against  night-clubs,  against  the  Cave  of  the  Golden 
Calf,  where  a  few  people  did  drink  too  much,  against  the  excessive 
dancing  at  poor  Giro's,  which  for  a  time  fell  among  Y.M.C.A.'s. 

Also,  during  the  war,  a  great  fuss  was  raised  in  the  newspapers 
over  the  flappers  in  the  Strand.  I  do  not  think  anybody  would 
have  bothered  much  about  the  flappers  if,  at  that  time,  we  had 
not  had  among  us  a  number  of  Anzacs  who,  as  everybody  knows, 
are  the  gentlest  and  most  guileless  of  men.  These  unfortunate 
young  soldiers,  finding  themselves  lonely  in  a  town  such  as  ours, 
where  no  man  needs  go  lonely  along  a  street  if  he  has  a  little 
determination,  lacking  all  the  home  comforts  which  are  implied 
in  the  possession  of  aunts,  made  their  acquaintances  where  they 
could.  The  flappers  in  the  Strand  who,  to  my  knowledge,  have 
always  been  in  the  Strand,  particularly  on  Saturday  afternoon 
and  on  Saturday  night,  when  they  descend  upon  Villiers  Street 
and  the  bandstand,  coming  from  Aldgate  and  alighting  at 
Charing  Cross,  naturally  welcomed  them.  Now,  in  the  old 
days  the  flappers  attached  themselves  to  any  young  man 
they  met;  sometimes  he  was  a  soldier  in  a  red  coat,  sometimes 
just  a  civilian,  and  nobody  bothered,  because  in  those  days  it 
was  not  evident  that  anything  unusual  existed  in  the  association. 
Common  sense  revealed  to  all  of  us  that  these  friendships  had 
been  formed  round  the  bandstand,  but  nobody  was  compelled 
to  know  that  they  did  not  arise  out  of  engagements  of  five  years' 
standing.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Anzacs,  with  their  beautiful 
bodies,  their  bronzed  faces  and  their  squash  hats,  were  noticeable; 

79 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

a  Puritan,  after  having,  in  the  course  of  Saturday  afternoon,  seen 
several  hundred  Anzacs  accompanied  by  pretty  girls,  was  com- 
pelled to  realise  that  there  could  not  be  so  many  Anzacs  united 
by  engagements  of  five  years'  standing,  to  the  flappers  in  the 
Strand.  The  Puritan  hates  realising,  because  when  he  realises 
he  has  to  do  something  energetic,  write  to  a  paper,  or  form  a 
committee,  or  something.  He  does  not  mind  writing  to  a  paper 
or  forming  a  committee,  but  the  whole  thing  upsets  him;  he 
cannot  cover  it  up,  and  he  runs  about  with  wild  eyes,  terrified 
because  the  thing  which  is  generally  covered  up  has  got  loose. 

It  was  that  gave  rise  to  the  trouble,  and  the  Puritans,  deter- 
mined that  the  flappers  should  flap  no  more,  had  to  manufacture 
a  theoretical  Anzac,  a  young  man  from  Melbourne  (but  born  in 
the  Bush,  where  no  woman  had  ever  been  before),  a  young  man 
extraordinarily  pure  in  spirit,  but  liable  to  fall  into  temptation 
even  if  he  had  to  cross  the  road  to  do  so,  a  young  man  imbued 
by  his  past  education  with  a  profound  reverence  for  womankind, 
whose  feelings  of  reverence  were  daily  being  outraged  by  shameless 
exhibitions  into  which  he  was  reluctantly  drawn.  It's  queer; 
this  flapper  question  occupied  the  Press  for  months;  now  and 
then  the  controversy  died  down,  and  then  a  Bishop  or  a  special 
article  writer  brought  it  up  again;  agents-general  were  called 
upon  to  proclaim  that  our  soldiers  feared  no  foe  in  shining  armour 
because  their  heart  was  pure,  while,  in  the  same  column,  presidents 
of  watch  committees  gloomily  acknowledged  that  something 
seemed  to  have  happened  to  the  purity  of  those  hearts.  But  all 
agreed  that  that  purity  must  at  once  be  restored,  that  the  Anzacs, 
which  includes  the  Canadians,  the  South  Africans,  and  other 
moral  weaklings,  must  be  protected.  To  this  day  we  are  protecting 
men  of  thirty  against  girls  of  fifteen :  I  never  heard  anybody  talk 
of  protecting  the  flappers,  for  it  was  assumed  that,  by  the  time 
they  were  fifteen,  they  had  sunk  too  deep  in  iniquity  to  deserve 
better  protection  than  four  walls  in  Holloway.  And  no  one 
seems  to  have  asked  himself  whether  these  young  men,  cut  away 
from  old  habits,  from  their  friends  and  their  work,  did  not  des- 
perately want  feminine  companionship;  the  members  of  watch 
80 


IN        SEARCH        OF        VICE 

committees  did  not  ask  Colonials  to  stay  with  them  for  the  week- 
end; for  a  long  time  they  did  not  even  provide  them  with  sufficient 
sleeping  places,  but  seemed  to  expect  them  to  make  merry  all 
night  in  the  ribald  waiting-rooms  of  Waterloo.  Briefly,  their 
virtue  was  to  be  its  own  reward,  and  certainly  we  could  not  take 
from  Nietzsche  the  aphorism  that  man  is  for  war,  woman  for  the 
recreation  of  the  warrior.  Above  all,  we  could  not  let  them  alone. 

Owing  to  this,  my  moral  sense  being  aroused  by  an  article 
in  a  Sunday  paper,  I  devoted  a  Saturday  to  a  search  for  vice.  Of 
course,  I  began  in  the  Strand,  where  I  was  told  vice  reigns.  I  saw 
a  great  number  of  soldiers,  doubtless  viciously  employed,  but 
conducting  their  debauches  with  singular  restraint  and  dignity. 
Outside  the  Corner  House  stood  a  number  of  boudoir  ladies 
from  the  Government  offices,  who  were  deplorably  waiting  for 
omnibuses;  many  of  them  may  have  been  viciously  employed, 
but  as  their  company  was  mostly  confined  to  their  own  sex,  they 
were  not  sliding  very  fast  down  the  butter-slide  of  perdition; 
mostly,  they  were  eating  chocolates,  and  the  fact  that  chocolates 
then  cost  four  shillings  a  pound  may  be  sufficient  evidence  of 
undesirable  conduct,  but  this  seems  to  me  hardly  enough  to 
hang  even  a  girl  on.  I  proceeded  up  the  Strand  where  the  East 
End  was  slowly  beginning  to  arrive,  mostly  in  twos  and  threes. 
Often,  indeed,  I  met  the  regrettable  flapper;  certainly  she  was 
powdered  and  lip-salved,  and  I  do  not  know  that  this  is  exceptional, 
but  right  up  to  Temple  Bar  not  a  single  flapper  made  an  effort 
to  draw  me  from  the  straight  path.  (It  is  all  very  well  saying 
that  I  may  not  be  the  sort  of  person  whom  the  flapper  would 
want  to  draw  from  the  straight  path,  but  surely  vice  has  no  pride, 
and  stoops  to  all  men.)  The  most  vicious  thing  I  saw  was  two 
soldiers  and  two  girls  walking  rudely  arm  in  arm. 

I  did  my  best.  Indeed,  I  think  I  became  a  regular  agent 
•provocateur,  but  I  did  not  seem  able  to  provoke  anybody.  So, 
desperately,  I  turned  back  and  crossed  the  river  towards  Waterloo 
Road.  The  reputation  of  this  gray  and  green  commercial  track 
was  made  by  the  street  arab  in  Captain  Brassbound"s  Conversion^ 
who  declared  that  if  he  did  in  Morocco  the  things  he  did  in 

8 1 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

Waterloo  Road  he  would  be  hanged.  But  nothing  was  happening 
in  Waterloo  Road;  many  people  were  drinking  in  many  public- 
houses;  I  entered  a  few  public-houses,  and  though  I  tried  as 
hard  as  the  two  houses  of  convocation  put  together,  I  found 
nothing.  I  will  not  weary  you  with  details;  it  is  enough  to  say 
that,  still  guided  by  my  Sunday  newspaper,  I  proceeded  on  my 
footsore  search.  By  evening,  I  was  lurking  round  Victoria, 
watching  from  the  corner  of  my  eyes  for  the  harpies  who  drug 
veteran  members  of  the  Band  of  Hope,  and  after  I  had  loafed  about 
for  a  while,  no  doubt  I  must  have  conveyed  a  harpy-like  suggestion ; 
I  was  seen  in  a  picture  palace,  peering  into  the  dimness  of  the 
curtained  boxes,  which  was  easy,  as  they  were  not  dim.  That 
night  I  was  seen  in  many  places,  searching  the  blackness  of  railway 
arches,  furtively  peering  down  the  staircases  of  tubes,  hoping  to 
discover  the  worst;  I  appeared  in  the  deserted  City;  the  back 
streets  of  Theobald's  Road,  the  confidences  of  a  hall  porter  in 
Gerrard  Street  (expensive  and  uneventful),  a  long  inspection  of 
the  first  floor  fronts  of  Vauxhall  Bridge  Road,  seen  from  the  toj 
of  a  tram,  all  these  grew  familiar  to  me;  and  still  nothing.  As 
time  went  on,  my  legs  grew  more  and  more  woolly;  my  mind  so 
obsessed  and  incoherent,  that  I  realised  time  would  soon  fit  me 
for  membership  of  the  National  Vigilance  Society.  I  even  entered 
the  Leicester  Lounge,  where  there  was  hardly  anybody,  as  it 
was  not  Boat  Race  night;  then  I  wondered  whether  a  visit  to 
North  Bank,  St  John's  Wood  .  .  .  and  awoke  from  my  trance, 
remembering  that  this  would  be  thirty  years  late.  There  is  no 
vice  in  London;  at  least,  there  is  nothing  deliberate  and  artistic, 
just  as  there  is  very  little  in  Paris  or  Vienna  that  would  justify  a 
Welsh  elder  in  taking  so  long  a  journey.  It  is  a  pity  that  so  fair 
a  bubble  should  be  pricked. 

This  does  not  mean  that  London  is  a  magnified  Exeter  Hall. 
There  are,  in  this  town,  about  half  a  million  bachelors,  and  that 
is  enough  to  lower  the  moral  status  of  any  city.  There  are  also 
rather  more  married  men,  which  does  not  mend  matters.  Observe 
the  bias  of  my  mind:  I  have  forgotten  to  tell  you  the  number, 
frequently  quoted  by  indignant  letter  writers  to  the  Press,  of 
82 


IN        SEARCH        OF        VICE 

women  who  hold  forth  temptation.  For  it  may  be  true  that  supply 
assists  demand,  but  it  is  much  more  certain  that  demand  makes 
supply.  During  the  war,  for  instance,  there  was  great  agitation  in  the 
Upper  House  of  Convocation,  where  the  Bishop  of  London 
revealed  that  in  Cayeux  and  Havre  undesirable  houses  were  fre- 
quented by  British  troops.  Canon  Burroughs  went  on  to  ask  for 
purity  patrols,  while  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  presented  a  resolution 
designed  to  protect  our  troops  from  molestation  in  London. 
This  is  all  very  well,  and  deserves  all  sympathy,  but  the  Bishop 
of  London  unfortunately  read  out  a  protest  addressed  to  the 
Mayor  of  the  French  town  by  its  inhabitants,  and  this  protest 
referred  to  *  crowds  of  English  soldiers  waiting  outside  the  houses.' 
Does  one,  then,  wait  for  temptation  ?  Does  not  temptation  steal 
upon  one  as  a  thief  in  the  night,  or  as  a  raging  lion,  seeking  whom 
it  may  devour  ?  It  is  a  picturesque  idea  this,  of  crowds  of  innocent 
victims  impatiently  waiting  for  an  opportunity  to  degrade  their 
eternal  spirit. 

Temptation  is  nonsense.  I  have  spoken  to  many  men  about 
temptation;  they  are  seldom  tempted,  and  this  for  very  good 
reasons :  men  do  not  fall,  they  dive.  The  women  who  '  prey  on 
them,'  fulfil  a  function  which  will  be  necessary  so  long  as  society 
is  as  vilely  constituted  as  it  is,  so  long  as  life  is  hard  and  insecure, 
so  long  as  social  relations  are  false,  so  long  as  marriage  is  expensive 
and  difficult  of  dissolution,  and,  especially,  so  long  as  the  hearts  of 
men  are  brutish  and  the  hearts  of  women  soft.  The  class  which 
for  centuries  has  been  hunted,  has  for  centuries  been  maintained 
by  the  hunter,  just  as  the  fox  is  bred  and  protected  for  the  pleasure 
of  the  chase.  Those  women  do  not  seem  to  me  to  lead  as  easy 
lives  as  the  men  who  profit  by  their  weakness;  they  look  rather 
less  well-fed,  less  well-clad;  they  wear  gold  of  a  lesser  carat; 
when  they  die  their  names  do  not  appear  in  the  newspapers  under 
the  final  advertisement:  'To-day's  wills.'  Truly,  the  wages  of 
sin  are  low.  Should  we  not  conclude  that  if  bread  is  so  dear,  and 
flesh  and  blood  cheap,  there  is  no  great  inducement  for  the  sale 
of  flesh  and  blood,  except  the  cost  of  bread?  Perhaps  it  is  the 
easiest  way,  but  only  for  those  to  whom  all  ways  would  be  easy. 

83 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

There  is  no  remedy  for  what  the  social  campaigners  call  the 
condition  of  our  streets,  except  an  alteration  in  the  mind  of  the 
men  who  walk  in  them;  Christianity  cannot  help,  for  Christianity 
attempts  to  solve  this  problem  by  purging  sin,  instead  of  realising 
misfortune.  Thus  too  many  Christians  justify  Tacitus :  '  After 
the  burning  of  Rome,  suspicion  fell  on  the  Emperor.  In  order 
to  allay  them,  the  Emperor  embarked  on  a  series  of  persecutions; 
among  those  he  persecuted  was  a  sect  that  called  themselves 
Christians,  who  had  incurred  the  animosity  of  the  populace  owing 
to  their  sullen  hatred  of  mankind.' 

Tacitus  was  wrong,  but  then  he  was  judging  the  Christians 
of  his  day  as  agitators.  The  streets  will  alter  when  the  houses 
along  the  streets  alter,  when  mankind  has  found  love  in  the  mind, 
when  it  is  no  longer  content  with  the  love  of  the  body.  The 
majority  of  men  seem  to  approach  life  as  pigs  do  the  trough. 
Visit  a  West  End  restaurant,  and  you  will  be  sure.  In  that  trough 
are  not  only  curds  and  whey,  and  truffles,  and  other  suitable 
dainties;  but  excessive  clothes  and  jewellery,  honours,  false  social 
values,  irrelevant  powers;  so  long  as  the  Gadarene  crowd 
nuzzle  and  fight  about  that  trough,  so  long  will  many  of  those, 
who  are  not  Gadarene  in  the  spirit,  be  infected  with  envy  and 
desire,  so  long  will  they  be  driven  to  shrillness  and  self-advertise- 
ment, so  long  drawn  by  popularity  and  repelled  by  fame.  Mean- 
while, it  naturally  follows  that  what  many  call  vice  should  endure, 
for  vice  is  the  satisfaction  that  dulls  the  flesh  when  the  spirit 
aches.  Happy  men  have  no  vices;  it  is  only  the  unhappy,  the 
hungry,  fly  to  them.  For  my  part,  if  I  had  to  make  laws  for  a 
new  society,  I  would  make  few.  I  should  say  rather  that  we 
will  build  our  new  society  so  that  all  may  be  assured  security  and 
justice,  but  no  more.  If  we  were  to  establish  justice,  we  should 
automatically  do  away  with  the  curse  of  the  world,  which  is  wealth. 
It  might  be  a  pity.  It  may  be  that  Anatole  France  is  right  when 
he  says:  'The  devil  dead,  good-bye  sin.  Maybe  beauty,  this 
ally  of  the  devil,  will  vanish  with  him.  Maybe  that  we  shall  not 
again  see  the  flowers  that  intoxicate,  and  the  eyes  that  slay.'  Still, 
one  would  like  to  see  it  tried. 
84 


u 


VII 
THE  POOR 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE    POOR 

NOT  much  more  than  a  dozen  years  ago,  Sir  Henry  Campbell- 
Bannerman  startled  England  by  stating  that  thirteen  million  of 
our  people  stood,  at  all  times,  on  the  edge  of  starvation.  He  took 
as  a  basis  the  study  of  the  condition  of  the  poor,  made  by  Mr 
Charles  Booth  in  a  great  number  of  volumes,  containing  a  great 
number  of  columns  of  figures,  and  was  alluding  in  general  to  the 
large  class  that  existed  on  a  family  income  of  twenty-three  shillings 
a  week.  There  was  something  terrible  about  those  figures,  so 
terrible  that  even  the  press  was  shocked.  But  there  was  something 
uninspired  and  inhuman  about  Mr  Booth's  columns  of  figures; 
it  is  all  very  well  telling  us  that  so  many  thousands  of  people  live 
five  in  a  room,  and  so  many  thousands  six  in  a  room,  and  so  on, 
but  it  does  not  mean  anything.  The  ordinary  man  finds  it  almost 
as  difficult  to  imagine  that  kind  of  life  as  to  visualise  a  million; 
he  can  see  six  people  in  a  room,  but  his  mind  does  not  bring  up 
the  idea  of  those  six  people  in  material  attitudes,  sleeping,  eating, 
courting,  making  merry;  figures  create  no  microcosm.  I  suspect 
that  to  understand  the  poor,  a  little,  you  need  to  know  very  well 
the  places  where  the  poor  live.  The  house  is  a  fairly  clear  indica- 
tion of  the  inhabitant;  it  is  the  house  he  chose,  or  the  house  to 
which  he  submitted.  Then  who  is  this  poor  man  ?  this  poor  man 
round  whom  so  many  essays  have  been  written  ?  by  the  Fabian 
Society,  judicial;  by  the  Charity  Organisation  Society,  severe; 
by  Mr  John  Galsworthy,  understanding  and  tender  ?  The  poor  man 
is  of  the  same  genus  as  the  rich  man,  but  of  a  different  species. 
(I  mean  the  born  poor  man  as  opposed  to  the  born  rich  man.) 
The  rich  man  is  no  better  than  the  poor  man ;  the  poor  man  is  no 
better  than  the  rich  man;  they  are  different  creatures,  made  such 
by  different  conditions,  just  as  a  Spaniard  and  a  Lancastrian  are 
made  different  by  their  various  lives.  Only,  and  there's  the 
political  rub,  Englishmen  have  not  to  administer  the  affairs  of 
Spaniards,  while  they  do  have  to  administer  the  affairs  of  their 

87 


A        LONDON  MOSAIC 

own  poor;  thus  it  is  important  that  they  should  not  blunder, 
because  the  poor  are  not  good  at  improving  conditions;  their 
attitude  is  to  grin  and  bear,  and  then,  one  day,  to  cease  to  bear. 

To  understand  them  at  all  one  must  take  an  imaginative  leap; 
if  you  find  this  difficult,  Mr  John  Galsworthy  has  taken  it  admir- 
ably in  The  Freelands.  Listen  to  his  description  of  a  labourer's 
life:— 

'  He  gets  up  summer  and  winter  .  .  .  out  of  a  bed  that  he 
cannot  afford  time  or  money  to  keep  too  clean  or  warm,  in  a  small 
room  that  probably  has  not  a  large  enough  window;  into  clothes 
stiff  with  work,  and  boots  stiff  with  clay;  makes  something  hot 
for  himself,  very  likely  brings  some  of  it  to  his  wife  and  children ; 
goes  out,  attending  to  his  digestion  crudely  and  without  comfort; 
works  with  his  hands  and  feet  from  half-past  six  or  seven  in  the 
morning  till  past  five  at  night,  except  that  twice  he  stops  for  an 
hour  or  so  and  eats  simple  things  that  he  would  not  altogether 
have  chosen  to  eat,  if  he  could  have  had  his  will.  He  goes  home  to 
a  tea  that  has  been  got  ready  for  him,  and  has  a  clean-up  without 
assistance,  smokes  a  pipe  of  shag,  reads  a  newspaper  perhaps  two 
days  old,  and  goes  out  again  to  work  for  his  own  good,  in  his 
vegetable  patch,  or  to  sit  on  a  wooden  bench  in  an  atmosphere  of 
beer  and  "  baccy."  And  so,  dead  tired,  but  not  from  directing 
other  people,  he  drowses  himself  to  early  lying  again  in  his  doubtful 
bed/ 

One  should  read,  as  a  contrast,  Mr  Galsworthy's  description 
of  the  rich  man  he  calls  Malloring: — 

'  Your  Malloring  is  called  with  a  cup  of  tea,  at,  say,  seven 
o'clock,  out  of  a  nice,  clean,  warm  bed ;  he  gets  into  a  bath  that 
has  been  got  ready  for  him;  into  clothes  and  boots  that  have 
been  brushed  for  him;  and  goes  down  to  a  room  where  there's  a 
fire  burning  already  if  it's  a  cold  day,  writes  a  few  letters,  perhaps, 
before  eating  a  breakfast  of  exactly  what  he  likes,  nicely  prepared 
for  him,  and  reading  the  newspaper  that  best  comforts  his  soul; 
when  he  has  eaten  and  read,  he  lights  his  cigar  or  his  pipe,  and 
attends  to  his  digestion  in  the  most  sanitary  and  comfortable 
fashion;  then  in  his  study  he  sits  down  to  the  steady  direction  of 
88 


THE  POOR 

other  people,  either  by  interview  or  by  writing  letters,  or  what 
not.  In  this  way,  between  directing  people  and  eating  what  he 
likes,  he  passes  the  whole  day,  except  that  for  two  or  three  hours, 
sometimes  indeed  seven  or  eight  hours,  he  attends  to  his  physique 
by  riding,  motoring,  playing  a  game,  or  indulging  in  a  sport  that 
he  has  chosen  for  himself.  And,  at  the  end  of  all  that,  he  probably 
has  another  bath  that  has  been  made  ready  for  him,  puts  on  clean 
clothes  that  have  been  put  out  for  him,  goes  down  to  a  good  dinner 
that  has  been  cooked  for  him,  smokes,  reads,  learns,  and  inwardly 
digests,  or  else  plays  cards,  billiards,  and  acts  host  until  he  is 
sleepy,  and  so  to  bed,  in  a  clean,  warm  bed,  in  a  clean,  fresh 
room.' 

I  challenge  you  to  say  that  this  is  exaggerated.  If  you  like, 
say  you  don't  care;  but  don't  say  it  isn't  true.  And  I  will  not 
preach  at  you,  but  suggest,  to  such  as  detect  in  me  sentimentality, 
that  if  we  belong  to  a  refined  and  gifted  class  into  whose  hands 
the  world  has  been  given,  if,  indeed,  we  are  refined  and  gifted 
people,  a  condition  such  as  that  of  the  poor  man  should  offend 
our  aesthetic  sense.  I  have  known  a  rather  larger  number  of 
poor  men  than  is  usual  in  my  class;  I  have  not  known  them  very 
well,  because  the  worst  of  the  difference  between  the  rich  and  the 
poor  is  that  the  poor  cannot  trust  the  rich;  they  know  them  too 
well.  The  poor  know  that  the  rich  conduct  against  them  the 
class-war,  and  so  they  are  defensive,  inclined  either  to  say  the 
thing  that  will  procure  a  tip,  or  a  post  as  ofHce-boy  for  little  Tommy, 
or  they  will  turn  savagely  pn  you  to  show  you  they  are  as  good  as 
you,  and  tell  you  that  though  margarine  is  good  enough  for  you, 
their  inborn  good  taste  makes  it  impossible  for  them  to  consume 
anything  but  the  best  butter.  One  does  not  get  together,  any 
more  than  that  Spaniard  and  that  Lancastrian  would  get  together, 
after  five  years  of  Ollendorff.  Still,  if  one  passionately  wants  to 
understand,  one  sometimes,  for  a  moment,  perceives  the  shadow 
of  a  hint  of  what  another  creature  is.  I  remember  perceiving  it, 
for  the  first  time,  in  the  midst  of  an  alien  family  in  Widegate  Street, 
just  off  Petticoat  Lane;  I  had  been  sent  by  the  firm  who  employed 
me  to  make  searching  inquiries  and  to  dispense  small  bounties. 
L.M.  G  89 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

My  aliens  were,  I  think,  German  Jews,  who  called  themselves 
Russian  refugees  because  it  sounded  more  appealing;  they  were 
not  a  pleasant  crowd;  the  man  was  a  great,  big,  heavy,  fat  fellow, 
with  greasy,  black  hair,  a  rather  surly  brigand ;  there  was  a  woman, 
too,  lying  in  a  corner,  dirtier  than  the  man,  presumably  because 
she  had  been  lying  there  for  some  time;  there  were  four  little 
children,  exceedingly  fat  and  well  kept,  the  usual  mystery  of 
Jewish  poverty;  there  was  an  extraordinarily  old  woman  who 
sat  next  to  the  woman  on  the  floor,  and  from  the  beginning  to 
the  end  of  the  interview  said  not  a  word  and  moved  not  a  feature. 
But  the  horror  of  it  came  from  the  woman  on  the  floor,  who  also 
said  not  a  word:  there  was  no  furniture  in  the  room,  not  a  table, 
not  a  chair,  not  even  a  bed;  the  woman  lay  on  a  few  crumpled 
newspapers  .  .  .  and  had,  the  night  before,  given  birth  to  a 
child,  who  lay  naked  between  her  indescribably  filthy  bodice  and 
her  breast.  They  were  there,  all  together,  in  the  midst  of  life, 
left  and  abandoned,  hungrily  desirous  of  the  moment  when  the 
great  industrial  machine  of  London  would  be  ready  to  consume 
them.  Impostors,  perhaps,  but  if  so,  hard  is  the  way  of  imposture 
and  slender  the  wages  thereof. 

I  remember  thinking,  after  that,  as  I  went  along  Petticoat 
Lane,  that  is  become  Middlesex  Street,  how  much  the  district 
resembled  the  people.  There  is  no  Petticoat  Lane  now;  Middlesex 
Street  holds  nothing  picturesque  or  national;  even  its  open-air 
market  on  Sunday  morning  can  be  paralleled  by  any  Saturday 
afternoon  scene  in  the  little  streets  off  Edgware  Road,  or  in 
Walker's  Court,  Soho.  It  is  a  street  mainly  of  warehouses; 
Widegate  Street  and  Sandys  Row  exhibit  the  oddity  of  narrow 
crookedness  and  no  more.  Petticoat  Lane,  where  the  shops  are 
paltry,  and  the  folk  divide  into  too  fat  and  too  lean,  is  not  even  a 
mean  street.  Its  one  charm  is  the  prevalent,  handsome  young 
Jewess,  aged  about  fourteen,  with  high  tasselled  boots,  and  plenty 
of  silk  stocking,  containing  plenty  of  leg.  She  is  a  fine  girl;  she 
haunts  you  all  along  Whitechapel  Road,  and  so  to  Mile  End,  with 
her  rude  air  of  wealth  and  wealth-consciousness.  I  don't  know 
how  she  does  it;  with  very  little  money,  some  crude  colour  and 
90 


THE  POOR 

some  light  furs,  she  suggests  opulence.  There  is  something 
matronly  about  her,  too;  she  looks  so  marriageable  .  .  .  and 
when  one  looks  into  the  humid  softness  of  her  brown  eyes,  one 
finds  a  limitless  rectitude  of  morals,  which  may  arise  from  a  limitless 
power  to  resist  temptation. 

Her  thick  mouth  is  tight  closed;  her  stays  are  tight;  her 
mind  is  tight.  She  is  fair  and  square,  and  will  give  her  husband 
value  for  his  money,  but  somehow  one  feels  it  a  pity  that  all  she 
will  give  him  is  value. 

Those  girls  are  part  of  a  certain  reckless  gaiety  that  pervades 
Whitechapel.  I  like  Whitechapel  Road;  the  streets  that  run 
off  it  are  indeed  tragic  with  dirt  and  desolation,  but  the  road 
itself,  which  is  the  pleasure-house  of  the  inhabitants,  is  full  of 
vitality.  At  all  times  it  is  thickly  peopled,  mostly  with  foreign 
Jews  of  all  types,  many  of  them  scrubby  little  men  with  beards, 
who  gesticulate  in  groups  at  street  corners,  and  argue  with  their 
co-religionists.  Some  are  in  a  state  of  offensive  prosperity. 
Those  Jewish  crowds  are  more  alive  than  the  average 
London  crowd;  their  eyes  shine  more,  as  if  they  were 
more  capable  of  conceiving  desire.  They  are  at  their  most  intense 
before  the  many  open-air  stalls,  where  you  may  buy  boots  and 
clothing,  flowers,  toys,  and  books,  and  music,  and  furniture,  and 
every  food  you  know,  and  some  you  do  not;  and  teasers  for  ladies, 
and  surprises  for  gents,  and  penny  boxes  of  tricks  that  will  make 
you  popular  at  a  social  evening,  and  collections  of  jokes  of  ancient 
lineage.  It  is  a  wonderful  show;  it  is,  in  many  ways,  more 
wonderful  than  Williamson's  Bonanza  in  the  Brixton  Road, 
because  it  is  cheaper,  because  a  penny  goes  farther,  and  thus  the 
penn'orth  is  more  hotly  desired.  All  that  points  to  another  side 
of  the  poor,  the  side  Mr  Galsworthy  never  sees :  their  joys. 

It  is  true  that  the  joyous  side  of  poverty  is  much  less  evident 
than  the  unhappy  side;  this  because  the  pleasures  of  the  poor 
are  either  localised  within  their  own  homes  (instead  of  outcropping 
in  restaurants),  or  because  they  are  confined  every  year  to  a  limited 
number  of  delirious  days.  Also,  the  places  in  which  they  live  are 
mostly  so  abominable  that  it  is  difficult  for  men  of  our  sort  to 

91 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

understand  that  delight  may  dwell  in  a  slum  a  little  more  easily, 
and  a  little  longer  than  love  in  a  cottage. 

The  slums  are  so  evident  to  our  eyes;  they  are  everywhere. 
For  instance,  there  is  an  unexpected  little  slum  in  the  middle  of 
Mayfair,  round  Shepherd  Market  and  Shepherd  Street.  I  believe 
the  whole  place  is  insanitary  and  should  be  pulled  down  (I  have 
no  love  for  the  picturesque).  It  is  surprising  to  think  that  the 
inhabitants  of  Mayfair  must  now  and  then  go  through  the  little, 
cramped  market  with  the  small,  dirty  houses,  yet  fail  to  discover 
that  here,  between  Curzon  Street  and  Piccadilly,  stands  a  knot  of 
public-houses  at  one  of  which,  perhaps,  Sam  Weller  was  asked  to 
take  part  in  a  swarry  of  boiled  mutton ;  the  hypothetical  investigator 
from  Grosvenor  Square  would  be  surprised  to  find  out  that  here 
one  can  buy  a  shirt  for  35.  6d.,  sweets  by  the  ounce,  underclothes 
for  2s.  I  id.,  and  that  for  2d.  a  hungry  man  can  purchase  a  meat 
pie.  It  is  like  that  all  over  London,  in  Belgravia,  in  Marylebone, 
just  as  in  St  Giles's.  They  have  not  quite  slain  St  Giles's,  the 
street-improvers,  and  there  still  is  charm  in  Seven  Dials,  where 
once  seven  little  public-houses  stood  at  seven  little  corners,  and 
each  public-house  had  a  dial.  You  told  the  time  by  tossing  up  or 
averaging.  And  now  there  is  but  one  dial  left,  and  it  has  lost  its 
hands.  (Hush,  my  soul  1  Do  not  let  the  spirit  of  Mr  E.  V.  Lucas 
invade  thee.) 

There  is  more  truth  in  the  frank  slums  over  the  river.  I  once 
enjoyed  the  services  of  a  supernumerary  postman,  who  frequently 
came  to  my  house  to  make  experiments  on  the  garden,  to  put  up 
shelves,  to  interfere  with  the  gas,  or  to  drown  kittens.  In  the 
end  he  went  too  far,  for  he  attempted  to  cure  the  ball-cock  of  some 
obscure  disease,  and  it  responded  to  his  treatment  by  flooding 
the  kitchen  three  feet  deep.  But  before  that  tragic  day  (you 
should  have  seen  my  cat  swim),  I  visited  him  in  Rotherhithe, 
because,  among  his  many  supernumerary  trades,  he  numbered  that 
of  vine  grower.  Against  the  back  of  his  house  in  West  Lane  he 
had,  indeed,  managed  to  grow  a  splendid,  muscular-looking  vine, 
which  produced  great  quantities  of  grapes;  these  grapes,  when 
eaten,  reproduced  what  is  probably  the  flavour  of  vitriol,  but  he 
92 


THE   MAY  FAIR 

DIRECT 


SHEPHERD'S  MARKET 


To  face  page  92 


THE  POOR 

was  very  proud  of  them,  and  ate  them,  and  he  kept  his  vine  in 
condition  by  occasionally  watering  its  roots  with  a  bucket  of 
bullock's  blood.  He  received  this  free,  because  he  kept  the 
slaughterer's  books  in  his  spare  time.  But  all  this  is  by  the  way, 
and  there  are  many  respectable  old  gentlemen  who  do  all  these 
things  and  are  thought  none  the  worse  of;  as  everybody  knows, 
lunacy  in  the  poor  is  originality  in  the  rich.  What  was  interesting 
about  the  supernumerary's  home  was  the  breadth  of  West  Lane, 
that  is  really  a  dingy  square  of  bare  earth  planted  with  trees  whose 
every  sooty  leaf  whispers :  '  Oh !  had  I  the  wings  of  a  dove ! '  It  is 
a  square  of  crumbling  Georgian  frontages  not  devoid  of  a  certain 
splendour.  That  discovery  is  one  of  the  keys  to  the  condition  of 
the  poor.  You  find  this  not  only  in  Rotherhithe,  but  in  Clapham, 
in  Brixton,  in  the  New  Kent  Road;  here  and  there,  behind  the 
board  of  a  photographer,  where  are  exposed  pictures  of  young 
men  with  all  their  hair  brushed  off  their  foreheads,  and  of  young 
girls  with  all  their  hair  brushed  into  their  eyes,  you  see  a  beautiful 
old  house  with  a  porch  of  the  Adams  type.  Many  of  these  streets, 
such  as  Old  Kent  Road,  such  as  Tooley  Street,  have  become 
wholly  commercial,  have  turned  into  long  lines  of  gray  warehouses 
and  decaying  side  streets,  haunted  by  many  children;  some, 
like  Jamaica  Road,  and  most  of  Bermondsey,  have  entirely  fallen 
into  the  hands  of  the  grayest  commerce,  but  here  and  there  you 
are  bound  to  find  a  still  splendid  Georgian  house,  looking  rather 
like  a  distressed  Irish  lady,  who  does  her  best  to  keep  her  trans- 
formation combed,  and  to  maintain  the  traditions  of  the  Ballymullins 
of  County  Mayo.  These  houses  are  in  the  hands  of  the  poor, 
which  means  that,  originally  intended  for  prosperous  people 
with  several  servants,  they  have  been  cut  up  into  tenements ;  this 
also  means  that  the  stairs  have  not  been  mended  since  the  days  of 
WTilliam  IV. ;  that  Queen  Victoria  came  to  the  throne,  and  married 
and  mourned,  that  Disraeli  passed  reform  bills  while  no  bath- 
rooms were  put  in;  that  the  tap  went  on  running  in  the  back- 
yard, where  Georgian  wealth  used  to  fill  the  jugs;  it  means  that 
the  old  house  has  lost  most  of  its  glass,  and  is  running  with  mice 
and  stinking  with  beetles;  that  the  drains  have  been  left  by  the 

93 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

local  to  a  higher  authority.  Part  of  the  tragedy  of  the  poor  is 
that  few  houses  have  been  built  for  them,  and  that  they  have  to 
adapt  themselves  to  houses  discarded  by  the  rich,  which  are  not 
meant  for  them,  which  are  not  usable  by  them.  The  rooms  are  so 
large  that  the  poor  cannot  afford  them  unless  they  over- 
crowd them;  or  they  have  tiny  windows  because  they  were 
limited  by  the  old  window  tax.  There  is  only  one  thing  to 
do  for  them,  as  is  the  case  with  most  institutions:  blow  them 
up. 

Will  the  superman  be  bred  by  the  L.C.C.  ?  I  do  not  know, 
but  I  am  sure  that  the  superman  will  not  be  bred  in  any  numbers 
in  the  middle  of  the  stench  of  the  past.  Evil  and  old  are  almost 
synonyms,  and  I  confess  that  I  like  better  the  vulgarity  of  the 
suburban  street,  with  its  concrete  that  pretends  to  be  stone,  and 
its  plaster  beams  that  pretend  to  be  wood,  its  wooden  pillars 
that  pretend  to  be  marble.  I  like  it  better,  with  its  bay  windows, 
so  built  that  no  article  of  furniture  will  fit  it,  with  its  awful  ingle 
nooks,  its  sham  gables  and  its  sham  dormer  windows,  than  the 
awful  old  Georgian  houses  near  Lamb's  Conduit  Street,  where, 
crowded  together  under  a  ceiling  still  flecked  with  gold,  on  which 
naked  cherubs  sprawl,  a  dozen  Russian  furriers  sit  and  scratch. 
For  the  hideous  modern  house  can  at  least  be  clean;  it  is  small; 
it  is  washable;  a  through  draught  can  be  arranged;  a  very  little 
it  opens  the  window  on  life. 

In  the  sense  of  housing  we  have  never  housed  our  poor; 
hardly  anywhere,  up  to  1900  or  so,  have  we  done  anything  but 
run  up  rude  brick  boxes  as  shelters,  or  adapt  the  dwellings  of 
the  rich.  Hence,  I  believe,  a  stricken,  scrofulous  generation. 
Yes,  I  know  there  is  a  charm  about  all  this  black  filth,  as  if,  indeed, 
flowers  did  sprout  from  dunghills.  It  is  the  charm  of  contrast, 
it  is  singularity.  You  feel  it  in  every  poor  region.  You  feel  it  at 
the  Elephant  and  Castle,  for  instance,  though  why  the  Elephant 
should  alone  be  famous,  while  at  the  two  opposite  corners  sit  the 
Rockingham  and  Alfred's  Head,  equally  great  public-houses, 
I  do  not  know;  you  feel  it  in  the  rowdiness  of  London  Road, 
and  in  a  sort  of  *  none-of-your-lip  '  air  that  hangs  over  Newington 
94 


THE  POOR 

Causeway.  You  feel  it  still  more  in  Deptford;  indeed,  Deptford 
is  a  pitiful  place,  all  gray  stone  and  gray  slate,  but  the  smell  of  the 
sea  hangs  about  it,  and  as  it  lies  along  the  docks,  often  above  these 
slate  roofs,  above  the  timber  stacks  of  strange  wood,  you  see  the 
tangled  masts  and  cranes  cut  out  against  the  sky,  patterns  evidently 
designed  by  Nevinson.  I  remember  once  seeing  on  the  shoulder 
of  an  old  woman  who  kept  a  stationer's  shop,  a  gorgeous  parrot. 
It  had  a  yellow  and  blue  body,  scarlet  feathers  in  its  tail,  a  bill  of 
ebony,  and  eyes  like  molten  gold.  It  sat  on  her  shoulder,  thinking 
of  things  old  as  the  willow  pattern.  The  parrot  looked  out  upon 
Deptford  High  Street,  through  the  flaming  topaz  of  its  eyes  at 
the  young  men  who  passed  now  and  then,  sun-burnt  starvelings 
of  the  merchant  service,  in  blue  jerseys;  the  sailors  rolled  and 
the  parrot  thought,  and  in  the  heat  the  East  breathed  from  the 
logs  of  mahogany  and  sandalwood.  But  under  all  that,  under  all 
that  theatrical  charm  was  buried  the  same  old  thing,  the  bad  old 
house  made  to  fit  the  bad  new  time. 

Yet,  the  poor  are  not  as  unhappy  as  they  look.  They  do  not, 
in  the  accepted  sense,  live  a  life  of  pleasure,  but  to  say  that  they 
have  no  pleasures,  or  can  have  none  because  they  are  poor,  is  a 
mistake.  The  poor  have  cheap  pleasures,  pleasures  which  many 
of  us  do  not  care  for,  and  they  take  no  part  in  what  we  choose  to 
call  pleasures.  If  I  were  compelled  to  say  something  sweeping, 
I  should  say  that  the  rich  have  less  pleasures  than  the  poor;  they 
are  free  from  more  pains,  but  that  is  not  the  same  thing.  The 
pleasures  of  the  poor  reside  much  more  than  do  ours  in  animal 
comforts;  whereas  the  rich  take  a  good  dinner  and  its  wines  as 
a  matter  of  course,  the  poor  make  a  feast  of  a  joint  or  a  gallon  of 
beer.  Things  such  as  these,  food,  drink,  warmth,  second-class 
travelling,  arm-chairs,  extra  blankets,  translate  themselves,  not 
into  the  mere  satisfaction  of  needs,  but  into  recognisable  pleasures. 
It  is  so  in  the  whole  field  of  their  amusements,  the  cinema,  the 
music-hall,  the  football  and  cricket  fields,  where  many  watch 
matches,  and  a  few  play  them;  it  is  so  in  regard  to  bank  holidays, 
to  journeys  to  Southend  or  Margate,  to  bathing,  to  visiting  the 
Chamber  of  Horrors,  to  being  photographed.  All  these  things 

95 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

matter  more  to  the  poor  than  they  do  to  the  rich,  and  you  will 
realise  that  this  is  true,  if  you  recall  that  you  have  never  met  an 
underpaid  clerk  or  a  working  girl  who  did  not  passionately  look 
forward  to  holidays.  On  the  other  hand,  you  are  all  familiar 
with  the  state  of  mind  of  a  well-to-do  family,  who  solemnly  discuss 
one  May  evening,  *  Where  shall  we  go  in  August  ?  '  When  the 
poor  discuss  where  they  shall  go  to  in  August,  and  most  of  them 
mean  on  August  Bank  Holiday,  they  do  not  come  together  in  the 
spirit  of  profound  misery  and  grim  hostility  that  characterises 
the  respectable  classes.  They  do  not  go  away  because  they  must 
go  away  in  August,  nor  must  they  go  away  in  August  because 
everybody  goes  away  in  August:  it  costs  them  something  to  go 
away.  The  holiday  is  a  treat,  and  is  not  a  part  of  the  household 
budget  estimated  for  in  every  income.  I  need  not  stress  this, 
but  we  all  know  that  when  estimates  are  prepared  one  must  put 
in  rent,  rates,  taxes,  doctor,  dentist,  chemist  .  .  .  holidays. 
That  is  not  pleasure.  But  it  is  pleasure  when  Alf  tells  Ethel  that 
he  has  had  a  rise,  and  that  they  can  this  year  rise  to  Cromer  instead 
of  Ramsgate.  The  difference  is  still  more  remarkable  if  we  recall 
the  *  thank-God-that's-over '  attitude  of  the  rich  when,  at  last,  their 
holiday  is  done,  and  the  beneficent  train  pants  into  Paddington  or 
Victoria.  I  have  known  many  poor  young  men  and  women,  and 
never  met  one  who  had  not  enjoyed  a  perfect  holiday.  I  have  met 
some  who  had  passed  seven  days  in  a  mackintosh,  and  even  then 
had  enjoyed  a  perfect  holiday. 

The  poor  have  pleasures,  because  they  draw  more  than  we 
can  from  pleasures;  they  anticipate  more,  because  they  are  less 
spoilt  by  the  experience  of  pleasures,  and  have  not  yet  found  out 
that  these  have  mutable  faces.  To  make  their  good  fortune  more 
complete,  they  are  even  capable  of  anticipating  pleasure  without 
being  disappointed  when  they  attain  it.  Their  pleasures  are 
keen,  because  they  are  rare.  They  are  keen,  because  they  obtain 
very  little  pleasure  without  paying  for  it,  and  as  they  have  little 
money  they  must  scheme,  plan,  save;  so  pleasure  becomes  a 
thing  to  strive  for,  a  true  reward;  they  have  to  climb  the  fig  tree 
to  secure  the  figs;  they  are  not  cursed  with  the  ownership  of  the 
96 


THE  POOR 

fig  tree,  cannot  lie  under  its  boughs  until  a  ripe  fig  drops  into 
their  mouth. 

We  must  not  forget,  too,  that  poverty  has  psychological 
reactions.  Mr  Bernard  Shaw  says  that  poverty  is  a  disgusting 
disease,  and,  on  the  whole,  he  is  right,  but  the  sufferer  has  mar- 
vellous moments  of  recovery.  In  those  moments  the  poor  man 
does  what  the  rich  man,  by  long  education,  has  been  taught  not 
to  do :  he  lets  himself  go.  He  can  hold  arms  with  half  a  dozen 
companions  and  proceed  uproariously  along  a  pier,  singing 
abominably  an  excellent  music-hall  tune,  to  the  inefficient  accom- 
paniment of  a  concertina  or  mouth-organ;  he  can  reel  out  of 
public-houses  in  a  state  of  complete  indifference  to  public  opinion, 
instead  of  being  secreted  by  the  club  waiter  and  paternally  controlled 
by  a  taxi-driver;  indeed,  the  poor  man  can  derive  much  vanity 
from  his  condition,  and  rise  in  the  esteem  of  his  fellows  next  day, 
because  he  took  part  in  such  a  spree.  (In  this  country,  if  you 
can't  be  great,  be  drunk.)  Above  all,  he  can  make  love  in  public. 
He  can,  unashamedly,  sit  upon  a  bench  in  the  park,  complicatedly 
intertwined  with  his  beloved,  sometimes  with  two  beloveds; 
nobody  minds,  and  the  little  god  of  love  will,  for  a  moment,  blind 
the  policeman's  bull's  eye.  He  needs  no  Sussex  down,  nor  footmen, 
nor  thermos  flasks,  to  make  a  picnic;  with  the  Daily  Mirror  beneath 
the  bough,  a  flask  of  ginger  beer,  and  her  beside  him  singing, 
*  Who  were  you  with  Last  Night  ?  '  Battersea  Park  is  Paradise 
enow. 

Their  social  functions,  too,  are  more  social,  and  less  functional. 
They  do  not,  in  our  sense,  entertain,  that  is  to  say  they  do  not,  at 
given  intervals,  go  through  their  address  book  and  say:  '  We 
can't  ask  Lady  So-and-So,  because  she  has  refused  our  last  two 
invitations,  and  I  suppose  we  must  ask  the  Fitz-Thompsons. 
Or  do  you  think  we  could  get  out  of  it  ?  *  No,  they  don't  entertain ; 
they  prefer  to  be  entertained,  and  so,  on  strictly  scheduled  occasions, 
namely,  Christmas,  birthdays,  wedding  anniversaries,  and  engage- 
ments, and  on  no  others,  the  whole  family  and  a  few  very  old  friends 
are  asked  to  a  spread.  And  it  is  a  spread.  It  is  not  compulsory 
jellies  from  Gunter's,  or  game  pie  from  the  Cafe  Royal,  or,  still 

97 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

worse,  a  dinner  no  better  than  every  day's  dinner,  but  merely  a 
little  longer;  it  is  a  real  spread  comprising  three  times  the  food 
that  is  normally  eaten,  choice  food,  such  as  tinned  salmon,  lobster, 
trifle  with  real  brandy,  stuffed  loin  of  pork,  likely  to  be  remembered. 
If  there  is  wine  it  is  port  wine,  the  real  article.  The  real  article 
and  not  the  rotten  routine.  So  the  people  they  bring  together 
are  not  the  frigid  crowd  we  call  acquaintances,  whom  most  of  us 
ask  because  they  have  asked  us,  or  because  they  threaten  to  do  so, 
people  whom  we  do  not  know  very  well  and  whom  we  don't  want 
to  know  very  well,  people,  therefore,  on  whom  our  display  cannot 
make  a  great  impression.  The  poor  ask  the  people  they  know  well, 
people  who  know  their  exact  income.  Thus  they  attain  a  great 
human  pleasure:  ostentation.  The  life  of  the  poor  is  harsh,  but 
their  joys  are  keen.  I  used  to  know  a  woman  who  called  them  the 
poor  poor.  What  a  fool  she  was  1 


VIII 
STONES 


CHAPTER  VIII 

STONES 

A  CRITICAL  foreigner,  whose  impressions  of  London  I  collected, 
(a  thing  one  does  to  foreigners  because  that  at  least  is  common 
ground),  gave  words  to  the  usual  complaint  of  the  Continental: 
London  was  a  mean-looking  city;  its  bricks  were  dirty;  it  used 
so  little  stone;  lacked  we  stone  ?  And  the  buildings  were  low. 
And  some  stuck  out  beyond  the  common  frontage,  while  some 
set  back.  And  so  on,  the  whole  served  with  the  usual  sauce  made 
up  mainly  of  respect  for  our  practical  spirit  and  our  commercial 
success,  the  things  we  are  not  proud  of  because,  indeed,  they  are 
ours. 

Almost  every  foreigner  has  that  impression  of  London,  and 
he  mistakes  the  spirit  of  our  city  so  much  that,  to  restore  him, 
one  has  to  show  him  typical  American  architecture  such  as 
Selfridge's,  Kingsway,  or  older  buildings  of  greater  majesty, 
such  as  the  Quadrant  or  the  terraces  round  Regent's  Park.  Failing 
stone,  we  exhibit  stucco,  and  the  intelligent  foreigner  discerns  no 
irony  in  the  epigram  on  Nash : — 

*  Augustus,  at  Rome,  was  for  building  renowned, 
And  of  marble  he  left  what  of  brick  he  had  found; 
But  is  not  our  Nash,  too,  a  very  great  master  ? 
He  finds  us  all  brick  and  he  leaves  us  all  plaster.' 

Now  stucco  is  an  unfairly  scorned  material;  it  produces  a 
pleasantly  smooth  surface,  which  weathers  to  creamy-olive,  and, 
indeed,  its  only  crime  is  that  it  conceals  brick.  Brick  and  tile  are 
two  of  our  most  delightful  materials;  people  do  wrong  to  sneer  at 
them  just  because  poor  cottages  are  so  built.  Red  brick,  when 
not  too  large,  such  as  the  delightful  little  Tudor  brick,  is  smiling 
and  domestic.  The  progress  of  building  has,  in  this  case,  proved 
a  retrogress  for  art.  Nowadays,  the  big  red  bricks  are  so  angular, 
so  perfectly  cemented  that  most  blocks  of  flats  approximate  to 

101 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

workhouses,  while  the  yellow  brick  now  current  should  be  reserved 
for  public  buildings  of  special  distinction,  such  as  national 
memorials  and  academies  of  painting.  But  the  little  red  brick 
that  you  could  hold  in  your  hand,  the  irregular  lines  of  which 
bespoke  a  temperament,  which  fitted  tenderly  into  patchy  cement, 
as  an  almond  of  alabaster  into  the  green  velvet  of  its  sheath,  was 
quite  another  kind  of  stone.  Still,  we  must  take  our  stones  as 
we  find  them,  and  I  do  not  agree  with  the  intelligent  foreigner 
who  thinks  London  a  mean  city.  Many  of  us  find  the  fine 
Continental  cities,  such  as  new  Paris,  new  Barcelona,  and  new 
Frankfurt,  as  painful  to  live  in  as  might  be  the  Agricultural  Hall. 
The  houses  are  too  high,  their  flanks  too  white,  their  alignment 
dull  as  a  righteous  life.  When  one  considers  towns  like  New  York, 
one  wonders  how  the  inhabitant  finds  his  way  home.  By  scent, 
I  suppose,  for  little  can  his  eyes  help  him  among  those  vast 
buildings,  all  alike. 

In  London,  few  streets  and  not  many  squares  are  alike.  The 
detestable  institution  of  the  leasehold  has  had  this  good  result,  that 
few  ground  landlords  in  central  London  have  built  the  houses 
they  own.  They  have  merely  imposed  upon  the  leaseholder  the 
obligation  to  build  a  good  house  worth  so  much.  As  a  result, 
the  leaseholder  has  built  what  he  fancied,  and,  therefore,  London 
is  not  the  result  of  the  schemes  of  some  horrid  central  office,  but 
of  the  oddities  and  taste  of  thousands  of  men.  That  is  why 
our  sky-line  is  so  broken,  why,  in  Berkeley  Square,  we  find 
two  charming  little,  narrow  houses  close  to  a  tall  block  of  flats; 
that  is  why,  in  Oxford  Street,  tottering  little  shops,  built  under 
William  IV.,  hug  the  Tube  Station  and  its  monster  hotel. 
Variety  is  the  salt  of  London  life. 

Where  London  has,  to  a  certain  extent,  abandoned  variety, 
and  that  to  good  purpose,  is  in  the  squares.  London,  more  than 
any  in  the  world,  is  a  city  of  squares ;  a  feudal  remnant  has  there 
set  most  of  the  important  houses,  while  those  of  the  vassals  were 
placed  in  the  side  streets,  and  those  of  the  churls  in  the  mews. 
The  squares  imply  social  classifications,  and  though  many  of 
them,  such  as  Golden  Square,  Soho  Square,  Regent  Square,  have 

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STONES 

fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  poor  or  of  commerce,  they  all  began 
by  being  centres  of  polite  society.  To  this  day  there  is  something 
in  a  square  that  no  other  thoroughfare  has;  a  sort  of  measured 
enclosedness,  a  finished  privacy.  The  garden  in  the  middle  that 
none  enter  save  lovers  and  cats,  a  garden  sometimes  sooty,  some- 
times kept  trim  by  a  gardener  born  old,  is  cut  off  from  the  rough 
movement  of  the  city.  Those  who  have  been  interested  enough 
to  penetrate  into  the  green  part  of  Cavendish  Square  or  Craven 
Hill  Gardens,  will  know  that  there  one  is  as  truly  lost  as  in  any 
lane  of  West  Anglia.  Those  green  spots  are  almost  untrodden, 
and,  to  all  visitors,  are  virginal.  The  impression  of  privacy 
extends  also  to  the  houses;  though  these  may  differ  they  do  not 
vastly  do  so.  The  contrasts  between  them  are  those  which  appear 
among  the  members  of  a  family.  All  are,  to  a  certain  extent, 
traditional,  and  it  is  mainly  in  the  squares  that  you  find  remnants 
of  Georgian  London. 

Most  of  Georgian  London  has  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the 
tenement  maker,  because  the  people  of  the  Georgian  period  built 
in  districts  now  populous,  such  as  Clapham,  Highbury,  Soho, 
Chalk  Farm,  because  the  leases  were  long  and  the  houses  good 
enough  to  make  it  unbusinesslike  to  pull  them  down.  Still,  some 
Georgian  London,  and  especially  some  London  of  William  IV., 
has  preserved  its  old,  flat  face,  sober  and  dignified,  yet  has  been 
modernised,  internally,  by  anachronistic  organs  such  as  the  bath- 
room, the  telephone,  electric  light.  Those  houses  are  delightful, 
for  the  adventure  of  the  present  has  purged  them  of  the  sins  of  the 
past.  Such  houses  as  the  one  now  tenanted  by  Messrs  Thornton 
Smith,  in  Soho  Square,  the  small  houses  with  the  Adams  doorways 
that  make  up  the  Adelphi,  the  slim  exquisiteness  of  Westminster 
in  Barton  Street  or  North  Street,  all  these,  by  their  very  form, 
suggest  that  inside  all  is  order  and  courtesy.  Those  houses  were 
built  when  land  was  cheap,  when  we  did  not  need  to  pile  Smith 
upon  Jones  and  call  the  result  Cornucopia  Court,  or  what  not; 
in  those  days  they  did  not  need  to  store  coal  in  the  pantry,  and, 
for  historic  reasons,  they  did  not  combine  the  bathroom  with  the 
kitchens.  Still,  these  are  only  survivals,  and  though  the  late 

103 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

William  Willett  did  what  he  could  near  Avenue  Road  to  restore 
the  Georges  under  an  Edward,  the  Georgian  house  is  dead.  It 
is  too  large;  it  leaves  aside  the  servant  problem;  its  rooms  are 
too  square,  difficult  to  light,  difficult  to  furnish  in  a  period  when 
furniture  is  small  and  tortured  in  design.  It  is  almost  as  dead 
as  the  Elizabethan  house,  which  is  only  a  curiosity. 

People  still  talk  of  Cloth  Fair,  but  if  you  go  to  Smithfield  you 
will  find  no  Cloth  Fair  now,  only  a  dirty  little  back  street,  not  at 
all  the  scenery  which  Sir  Herbert  Beerbohm  Tree  would  have 
thought  suitable  for  the  entry  of  Bolingbroke  into  London.  If 
you  are  wise,  you  will  at  once  step  back  farther  into  the  past  and 
enter  St  Bartholomew's,  where  arches  and  pillars,  broad  and  solid 
as  those  of  hell,  will  make  you  understand  the  Mosaic  quality  of 
the  Christian  faith.  In  St  Bartholomew's,  that  is  black  and 
dispassionate,  dwells  no  gentle  Redeemer,  but  the  spirit  of  the 
Lord  of  Hosts. 

True,  there  is  Crosby  Hall,  though  it  is  hard  to  shake  off  the 
connection  between  Crosby  Hall  and  chops,  for  I  knew  it  best  in 
the  days  when,  there,  one  ate  chops  (and  sirloin,  yes,  sirloin).  In 
those  days,  in  the  City,  Crosby  Hall  was  really  an  Elizabethan 
place,  a  mullioned  old  house,  with  sunken  beams.  For  most  of 
the  day  it  held  people  who  ate  a  great  deal,  drank  a  great  deal, 
and  bellowed,  and  played  billiards,  and  flirted  with  the  waitresses, 
and  made  bets,  and  told  undesirable  stories.  Yes,  it  was  real 
Shakespeare,  all  the  time.  But  one  day  they  pulled  down  Crosby 
Hall  and  re-erected  it  in  Chelsea,  near  the  end  of  Oakley  Street; 
the  last  time  I  went  in  they  were  holding  an  exhibition  of  arts  and 
crafts,  which  proved  that  leather  might  be  compelled  to  assume 
many  forms  it  didn't  like.  I  never  saw  it  again.  Then  there  is 
St  Ethelburga,  the  little  wooden  church  in  Bishopsgate,  which 
takes,  I  believe,  a  special  interest  in  seamen.  A  pleasant  little 
church,  for  there  is  something  very  human  and  pre-Fire  in  its 
having  let  off  its  frontage  to  an  optician.  (I  wonder  whether  the 
optician  and  the  incumbent  both  labour  under  the  motto  of 
Usebius.) 

But  if  Georgian  London  has  left  so  little,  and  Elizabethan 
104 


STONES 

London  hardly  anything,  it  is  not  so  of  the  Victorian  period,  which 
still  hangs  over  most  of  the  city  like  the  shadow  of  a  great  tree 
which  will  not  let  the  flowers  grow.  Nearly  all  the  houses  in 
central  London  are  Victorian;  most  are  early  Victorian,  because 
the  building  rush  in  the  'eighties  and  'nineties  affected  mainly 
the  suburbs,  where  a  ribald  sestheticism  combined  with  the 
discovery  of  the  quaint  by  Charles  Dickens.  Now  the  Victorian 
period  was  neither  picturesque  nor  quaint;  it  looked  upon  that 
sort  of  thing  as  indecent.  It  liked  a  plain  house  for  a  plain  man, 
and  the  Victorian  man  got  his  house.  In  another  fifty  years  or 
so,  when  time  has  done  with  the  houses  of  the  'sixties,  on  their 
tombstone  shall  be  inscribed:  '  Eight  steps  and  a  brass  knocker, 
such  are  the  wages  of  virtue.'  Some  think  that  too  much  evil  is 
spoken  of  the  Victorian  period,  and  that  much  that  was  solid, 
sound,  truly  English  came  to  fruition  in  those  days.  For  my 
part,  I  think  that  the  Victorian  period  was  nothing  but  a  bad 
dream,  that  the  English  are  essentially  the  people  who  drank 
sack,  and  danced  round  the  maypole,  just  as  now  they  drink  beer 
and  go  to  the  cinema.  The  English  are  a  pleasure-loving  people, 
an  emotional,  perhaps  a  hysterical  people;  they  are  gay,  improvi- 
dent, thriftless,  adventurous,  reckless  people;  there  is  little  to 
pick  between  them  and  the  Neapolitans.  Yes,  there  has  been  a 
lot  of  respectability  and  talk  of  carriage  folk,  and  heavy  sideboards, 
and  being  shocked,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing;  but  I  submit  that 
English  history  extends  farther  back  than  1830,  that  there  were 
happy  days  before  the  English  grew  oppressed  with  their  new 
respectability,  which  arose  slowly  out  of  the  sudden  growth  of 
wealth  among  numbers  of  ill-educated  people.  Before  the  'thirties 
there  were  only  two  kinds  of  people :  those  who  did  what  they  were 
told,  and  those  who  did  what  they  liked.  The  factory  had  begun 
to  take  shape  in  1770;  towards  1830  occurred  the  rise,  all  over 
the  Midlands  and  North,  of  small  workshops  that  became  mills. 
This  turned  some  members  of  the  working  class  into  capitalists. 
As  the  workshops  grew,  the  working  class  population  grew 
round  them  and  formed  towns.  To  serve  the  needs  of  these 
towns  shops  arose;  these  became  prosperous,  and  produced 

L.M.  H  105 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

another  fairly  rich  class,  the  shopkeeping  class.  From  the  'sixties 
onwards,  the  workshops,  warehouses,  and  shops  grew  so  much 
that  those  who,  once  upon  a  time,  were  scriveners,  became  managers 
and  agents.  This  produced  a  third  class  of  ill-educated  people 
endowed  with  some  money. 

The  result  was  soon  felt:  we  had  created  the  middle  class, 
and  as,  in  those  days,  the  middle  class  was  still  conscious  of  the 
upper  class,  realised  itself  as  lowly  bred,  it  concluded  that  the 
only  way  of  living  up  to  its  new  money  was  to  be  more  moral  and 
especially  more  refined  than  either  the  upper  class  or  the  lower 
class.  That  is  the  origin  of  the  red  damask  curtains,  of  the  English 
Sunday  (which  once  upon  a  time  was  debauched  and  delicious), 
of  wax  fruit,  tall  hats,  black  silk,  jet,  and  such  like  horrors. 

But  is  that  the  end?  No.  Round  about  1890,  the  middle 
class  having  made  still  more  money,  having  split  itself  up  into 
upper  middle  class  and  lower  middle  class,  having  sent  its  sons 
to  the  public  schools  and  universities,  its  daughters  to  Brussels 
or  Dresden,  began  swiftly  to  slough  off  the  old  'virtues  which  it  no 
longer  needed.  The  daughters  went  to  dances  under  slender 
chaperonage;  some  of  them  became  Fabians;  red  paper  was 
scraped  off  and  replaced  by  brown ;  Jacobean  furniture  came  in ; 
respectable  people  began  to  dine  at  hotels  and,  what  was  much 
more  fatal,  to  lunch  at  restaurants.  Bridge  came  in  ...  cigarettes 
crept  in.  I  do  not  say  the  middle  class  is  dead,  but  when  you  are 
tempted  to  think  that  the  Victorian  period  represented,  in  English 
history,  anything  but  an  accident,  anything  but  the  formulation 
of  a  class,  then  consider  most  of  your  young  acquaintances,  and 
ask  yourself,  honestly,  whether  those  very  people,  fifty  years  ago, 
would  not  have  gone  to  funerals  with  weepers  tied  round  their 
hats.  To-day,  there  is  a  continuous  impulse  in  the  middle  class 
to  grow  smart,  fast,  intellectual,  all  that.  Call  this  progress  or  call 
it  decay,  never  mind;  I  submit  that  it  exhibits  Victorian  respect- 
ability as  merely  a  stage  in  the  development  of  English  people, 
and  that  we  are  tending  towards  a  time  when  the  jolly  1780*5  will 
live  again  with  something  hectic  and  abandoned  thrown  in.  The 
English  people  are  a  light  people,  a  gay  people,  and  the  famous 
1 06 


STONES 

period  183 o- 1880  was,  after  all,  a  short  period  in  the  eight  hundred 
years  odd  which  separate  us  from  the  Conqueror.  It  was  a  period 
of  reconstruction,  and  the  English  emerged  from  it  as  new  English, 
not  very  different  from  the  old  English.  We  have  digested  our 
money;  of  course,  England  was  sleepy  while  she  did  that;  those 
who  believe  that  that  sleep  was  natural  to  her  suffer  from  illusion. 
Now  she  has  begun  to  spend  the  resultant  energy.  Bustles, 
daguerreotypes,  Sunday  rest,  and  whiskers,  Pecksniff  will  find 
all  that  in  another  region. 

Pecksniff  will  also,  at  least  I  hope  so,  if  he  is  to  be  happy, 
find  the  Victorian  house.  It  was  not  a  bad  house  inside,  in  spite 
of  its  vast,  incoherent  basement,  the  ell  at  the  back  of  the  drawing- 
room,  and  the  shameful  servants'  bedrooms;  it  was  a  roomy 
house,  but  there  was  too  much  in  it  for  the  cockroach  and  the 
mouse.  Most  of  Bayswater,  Paddington,  Kensington,  and 
Marylebone,  are  Victorian;  all  depend  upon  slave  labour.  Few 
of  those  houses  can  be  managed  properly  on  less  than  three  servants; 
some  are  still  run  by  one  servant  assisted  by  the  young  ladies,  who 
do  the  dusting,  but  the  importance  of  the  point  lies  in  this:  with 
one  servant  they  are  dirtily  run ;  with  two  servants  they  are  barely 
run.  They  are  full  of  corners,  corridors,  cupboards;  they  collect 
dust,  and  eat  up  light.  In  days  when  flesh  and  blood  was  cheap, 
when  you  could  easily  get  young  girls  to  wear  the  skin  off  their 
knees  on  the  steps,  the  edifice  stood  up  pretty  well.  But  those 
days  are  gone;  the  servant  problem  is  partly  due  to  the  Victorian 
house,  which  became  almost  too  much  to  bear  when  the  servants 
developed  enough  to  understand  that  there  were  things  they  need 
not  bear.  What  will  replace  it,  we  do  not  yet  know.  It  is  too 
early  to  talk  of  a  revolutionary  change  into  blocks  of  flats  with 
common  kitchens,  common  dining-rooms,  and  common  nurseries; 
all  that  will  come,  has  come,  is  extending,  but  it  is  not  yet  general. 
The  first  step  is  the  break-up  of  the  Victorian  house  into  maison- 
ettes. You  can  see  this  going  on  all  over  central  London,  where 
two  families  now  share  a  house  built  for  one.  Others  are  being 
absorbed  by  the  boarding-house.  Briefly,  we  are  packing  closer 
into  the  old  spaciousness,  partly  because  we  do  not  need 

107 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

it   for   the   purposes   of  ostentation,   partly   because   we   cannot 
afford  it. 

Still,  there  is  much  left  of  old,  bleak  London,  Highbury 
Crescent,  Warwick  Street  (Pimlico),  Mornington  Crescent,  and 
many  others.  There  is,  about  those  places,  what  there  is  more 
proximately  about  Bayswater,  a  sense  of  past  comfort,  dating 
back  to  the  days  when  comfort  meant  red  paper  in  the  hall,  brown 
paint,  thick  stuff  curtains,  polished  boards,  large  and  straight 
chairs  with  hard  seats  for  the  young,  stuffed  seats  for  the  old. 
Those  houses  were  comfortable  in  a  frowzy  way;  they  were 
houses  in  which  one  ate  a  great  deal,  slept  a  great  deal,  drank  a 
great  deal,  and  thought  within  the  limits  of  genteel  taste.  Little 
by  little  people  began  to  stay  up  later,  so  had  less  time  to  sleep; 
then,  their  fathers  having  drunk  too  much,  they  found  that  their 
inherited  constitutions  did  not  allow  of  similar  excess,  while  the 
intrusive  foreigner  brought  in  his  curious  dishes  which  taught  us 
to  eat  less,  if  more  peculiarly.  Picture  galleries  were  opened  on 
Sunday,  concerts  were  held  upon  that  day;  matinees,  cinemas, 
other  pleasures,  all  these  things  making  a  continual  call  upon 
time  and  purse,  have  stolen  some  of  its  privileges  from  the  old 
home,  until  it  ceased  to  be  home  in  the  sacramental  sense,  a 
pleasure  in  itself,  and  turned  into  a  dormitory.  The  bleak  old 
nouses  of  London  have  responded  to  this  movement,  by  breaking 
up  into  maisonettes,  converting  themselves  into  boarding-houses 
and  lodgings;  there  are  now  few  claimants  to  their  five  floors; 
indeed,  the  five  floors  grow  more  and  more  disliked.  To-day, 
when  you  walk  along  a  street  such  as  Mornington  Crescent, 
whose  gray  face  wears  the  inscription :  '  Joy  forbidden,*  you  are 
to  a  certain  extent,  labouring  under  an  illusion,  for  the  life  behind 
those  gray  fronts  is  not  gray.  It  is,  more  and  more,  the  life  of 
people  who  have  no  roots,  who  have  settled  for  a  short  time  in 
rooms,  whose  employment  is  precarious,  whose  fortunes  are 
small,  people  who  live  on  small  weekly  wages,  or  even  on  social 
piracy,  whose  presence  must  cause  uneasiness  among  the  portly 
Victorian  ghosts.  Inside  those  houses  live  few  families,  because 
no  families  of  wealth  care  to  live  in  such  districts,  while  poor 
108 


STONES 

families  cannot  afford  the  servants  to  keep  such  houses  clean. 
So  their  dwellers  are,  many  of  them,  adventurers,  semi-respectable 
people  who  have  something  to  do  with  the  stage,  or  who  are  in  a 
sort  of  way  in  the  city.  They  never  want  the  windows  cleaned,  and 
when  they  sit  down  at  the  Victorian  writing-desk  with  the  waggly 
legs,  they  care  little  if  it  is  not  dusted :  they  blow.  That  is  the 
end  of  those  old  houses ;  to-day,  most  of  them  are  spinning  out 
the  last  of  their  long  leases  in  a  truly  Victorian  way :  keeping  up 
appearances,  and  pretending  to  be  as  respectable  as  ever. 

In  South  Kensington  and  Bayswater,  the  bleakness  is  less 
complete,  because  those  districts  are  dimly  in  the  West  End, 
with  a  little  too  much  End  about  it.  They  are  '  possible  '  districts, 
as  the  phrase  goes  among  some  of  us;  a  '  possible  '  district  is  one 
the  name  of  which  can  be  stamped  upon  one's  note-paper.  The 
tenants  of  Bayswater  and  South  Kensington  number  many  of  the 
old-fashioned  people  who  like  quiet  places,  comfortable  homes, 
in  some  cases  gardens,  but  many  more  are  making  of  those  places 
a  jumping-off  ground.  They  pass  through  Bayswater  or  South 
Kensington  on  the  way  to  Mayfair,  Belgravia,  and  Marylebone ; 
they  are  already  well-to-do,  and  intend  to  be  better-to-do;  in 
those  places  they  associate  with  the  people  who,  once  upon  a  time, 
were  very  well-to-do  and  are  now  less  so;  those  districts  are  social 
junctions.  But  everywhere  the  boarding-house  is  gaining  ground, 
and  nowhere  does  one  see  this  so  well  as  in  Cromwell  Road. 
Cromwell  Road  is  a  remarkable  street;  its  length  has,  on  a  warm 
and  hazy  day,  a  quality  of  eternity.  It  seems  to  have  no  beginning, 
no  end;  one  might  walk  for  ever  along  its  broad  stretch,  between 
those  high  walls;  a  prison  yard  must  be  like  that.  This  does  not 
mean  that  I  dislike  Cromwell  Road;  far  from  it;  I  visit  it  at  least 
once  a  week,  for  purposes  of  meditation.  One  can  meditate  in 
Cromwell  Road,  because  nothing  ever  seems  to  have  happened 
there;  it  certainly  looks  as  if  nothing  could  happen.  It  holds 
no  tragedy,  no  comedy.  You  pass  along  the  endless  series  of 
houses,  all  of  which  have  four  and  a  half  or  five  and  a  half  floors, 
the  half  being  accounted  for  by  the  servants'  rooms,  to  which  the 
Victorian  builder  never  accorded  a  complete  floor;  they  are  nearly 

109 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

all  alike,  having  five  to  nine  steps,  a  porch  on  pillars,  and  a  flat 
face;  the  only  difference  between  one  house  and  another  is  the 
age  of  their  lease,  the  age  being  revealed  by  the  condition  of  the 
paint:  some  were  repainted  three  years  ago,  some  two  years, 
some  recently.  White,  gray,  black,  such  is  their  symphony.  If 
you  look  in  at  the  windows  of  the  dining-room  you  will  generally 
see  a  large  mahogany  table:  in  the  middle  of  this  stands  a  heavy 
brass  pot;  in  the  brass  pot  grows  a  big  green  fern.  Behind  the 
green  fern,  and  always  facing  the  window,  stands  a  colossal  side- 
board, surmounted  by  a  mirror  against  which  is  outlined  a 
tantalus  and  sometimes,  which  is  very  regrettable,  a  cruet.  (You 
do  not  see  a  bottle  of  salad-dressing  in  Cromwell  Road,  but  a  little 
farther  west  you  do.)  Near  the  tantalus  sometimes  dwell  a  silver 
cup  or  two.  On  one  side  of  the  room  you  discern  a  mantelpiece, 
decorated  with  coloured  pots,  a  large,  black  marble  clock,  suitably 
representing  a  tomb.  There  may  also  be  some  brass  ash-trays 
and  bowls  of  obviously  Indian  pattern.  The  carpet  one  cannot 
see,  but  I  feel  sure  that  it  is  generally  a  red  and  blue  Turkey. 
That  is  old  Cromwell  Road,  grandpapa's  old  Cromwell  Road, 
comfortable  in  its  stifled  sort  of  way.  Rail  as  I  may  at  the  Victorian 
period,  I  have  a  vague  liking  for  those  old  solidities,  that  mean 
pleasant,  saddleback  chairs,  pipes  (not  cigarettes),  the  Spectator, 
port,  and  evenings  devoted  to  the  reading  of  travel  books 
and  memoirs  (not  novels).  Dull,  but  solid,  and  in  Cromwell 
Road  one  is  aware  of  a  certain  merit  in  solidity  because  it  finds 
itself  at  the  point  of  flux  between  the  old  civilisation  and  the 
new. 

The  new  civilisation  has  already  set  its  teeth  into  Cromwell 
Road.  The  houses  are  unchanged,  but  a  great  many  have  been 
bought  up  and  joined  together,  decorated  with  stained  glass, 
re-named  as  hotels.  These  have  fancy  pots  instead  of  brass  pots, 
ferns  from  strange  bournes;  curtains  of  lesser  conventionality; 
looking  out  from  a  window  you  no  longer  see  Mary  Jane  in  a  pink 
dress,  but  a  sombre  face,  which  may  be  that  of  a  musician  or  a 
poet;  or  of  a  Balkanic  waiter  stained  with  political  conspiracy. 
The  inhabitants  of  those  hotels  are  Americans,  provincials,  people 
no 


STONES 

who  have  grown  tired  of  housekeeping  and  like  to  buy  it  ready- 
made;  they  number  many  widows  who  behave  as  if  they  were 
conscious  of  a  transitory  condition,  actors,  unattached  people  of 
all  kinds.  These  are  not  the  old  Cromwell  Road  people;  they 
are  a  new  type,  which  you  might  call  the  Cromwell  light-Roadster, 
people  who  drive  up  in  taxis  at  all  times,  and  even  after  eleven 
o'clock.  Kensington  means  nothing  to  them;  not  one  of  them 
will  ever  be  an  alderman.  They  are  breaking  up  the  Cromwell 
Road,  and  many  of  those  who  read  these  lines  will  see  Cromwell 
Road  without  a  private  dwelling-house,  except  that  here  and 
there  a  pair  of  very  old  maids,  accompanied  by  some  very  fat  dogs, 
will  stick  to  the  old  house.  They  will  groan  at  the  taxis  which 
stop  at  the  Grand  Imperial  next  door,  send  out  an  old  retainer  to 
warn  off  the  street  band,  and  grumble  at  the  electric  underground, 
just  as  they  grumbled  at  the  smoky  steam  underground.  Then 
they  will  die,  and  the  Grand  Imperial  will  extend  its 
possessions. 

The  Grand  Imperial  is  extending  all  over  London.  Not 
only  have  hotels,  undreamt  of  twenty  years  ago,  sprung  up  at 
unexpected  corners  near  the  Strand  and  over  the  tube  stations, 
not  only  have  they  taken  over  anything  between  two  and  six 
private  houses  at  a  time,  but  they  are  buying  up  site  after  site:  a 
big  one  in  Piccadilly  near  Down  Street,  also  the  St  George's 
Hospital  site,  perhaps.  They  are  extending  everywhere,  com- 
munising  life.  It  is  ail  very  well  saying  that  the  hotel  is  a  sign  of 
the  decadent  luxury  of  the  day,  but  that  is  not  true.  In  the  first 
place  there  is  in  hotels  no  such  thing  as  decadent  luxury;  all  that 
the  best  offer  are  things  such  as  plenty  of  light,  air,  space  to  move 
in,  electric  light  when  you  want  it,  hot  water  day  and  night,  a 
telephone  by  your  bedside,  a  comfortable  common  room  to  write 
in,  a  band  to  amuse  you  while  you  have  your  meals;  such  like 
simple,  obvious  things  which  make  up  the  ordinary  comfort  of 
life.  The  old-fashioned  people  look  upon  this  as  luxury,  but  I 
submit  that  the  facility  of  having  a  hot  bath  when  you  want  it  is 
a  natural  thing,  and  one  of  the  first  things  that  a  developing 
civilisation  should  give  us  all.  Some  people  seem  to  think  it 

in 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

morally  wrong  to  be  comfortable,  and  it  shocks  one  to  think  that 
so  many  of  our  best  minds  should,  for  so  long,  have  been  working 
out  ideas  for  pleasant  and  harmonious  heating,  lighting,  cooking, 
only  to  be  told  that  they  are  pampering  us.  The  whole  object  of 
civilisation  is  to  pamper  us,  to  get  rid  of  nature.  Nature 
is  all  very  well  in  the  summer  numbers  of  the  magazines; 
it  looks  very  pink  and  scented  with  hay,  but  real  nature  is  rather 
cold,  damp,  earwiggy,  dark,  always  ill-drained,  and  much  less 
healthy  than  London.  The  object  of  civilisation  is  to  reduce  the 
struggle  for  life,  and  to  make  the  material  side  of  it  pleasant  enough 
to  be  forgotten.  If  that  is  not  true,  then  let  us  back  to  the  cave- 
man forthwith. 

The  truth  is  that  hotels  are  not  luxurious  and  not  dear.  It 
sounds  dear  to  pay  a  pound  a  day  for  a  bedroom  and  your  board, 
which  is  what  one  paid  before  the  war,  but  if  one  reflects  that  for 
that  pound  one  also  has  the  use  of  excellent  common  rooms,  that 
one  pays  nothing  whatever  for  all  sorts  of  racking  things  such  as 
gas,  electric  light,  water  rate,  borough  rate,  inhabited  house  duty, 
house  repairs,  that  one  owes  nothing  to  the  sweep,  no  tips  to 
tradesmen,  it  is  not  dear.  One  has  the  space  one  needs  to  live  in, 
and  that  is  the  essence  of  the  old-fashioned  opposition  to  hotel  life  : 
it  does  away  with  the  large  number  of  rooms  that  people  used  to 
think  they  needed,  rooms  in  which  they  shut  themselves  up 
behind  closed  windows  and  drawn  blinds.  The  old-fashioned 
hate  the  simplification  of  life;  they  do  not  like  to  think 
that  people  need  no  longer  tie  themselves  down,  define  and 
label  themselves:  hotels  are  meant  for  those  who  do  not  go  to 
the  Zoo. 

Indeed,  the  Zoo  is  a  tragic  hint  of  the  period  we  have  just 
left  behind.  It  was  founded  in  1826,  its  object  being,  of  course, 
*  to  further  the  study  of  animal  life,'  but  it  did  not  very  long  retain 
that  character.  The  only  character  it  retained  was  a  sort  of  brutal 
insensibility,  a  capacity  for  not  understanding  what  it  means  to 
animals,  accustomed  to  run  forty  miles  a  day,  or  to  fly  out  of  sight, 
to  find  themselves  boxed  up  in  small  cages.  The  treatment  of 
animals  in  the  Victorian  period  was  very  like  the  treatment  of 

112 


o 

N 


STONES 

children;  people  meant  well  by  their  children,  which  did  not 
prevent  their  constraining  them  to  immobility  on  Sundays,  forcing 
them  into  careers  they  disliked,  or  into  marriages  with  people  they 
detested.  They  were  a  sentimental  and  brutal  generation,  mainly 
because  they  were  stupid.  So  the  Zoo,  which  is  now  a  vulgar 
gapery,  remains  as  one  of  the  ugly  blots  inherited  by  our  people; 
I  hope  to  live  long  enough  to  see  Parliament  pass  an  act  for 
its  suppression.  It  seems  to  me  indecent  that  people  who  do  not 
know  the  difference  between  a  leopard  and  a  yak  should,  any 
afternoon,  for  sixpence  or  a  shilling,  or  on  Sundays  if  they  are 
the  friends  or  the  servants  of  a  Fellow,  line  up  in  hundreds  outside 
cages  anything  between  six  feet  and  thirty  feet  long,  to  see  wretched 
animals  pace  up  and  down,  up  and  down  eternally,  or  tragic  birds 
hop  from  an  upper  stick  to  a  lower  stick  and  then  back  again,  not 
one  of  them  with  the  space  for  a  full  spring  or  a  flight,  sentenced 
to  penal  servitude  for  life,  a  sentence  which  we  inflict  on  no  man 
except  for  murder.  I  agree  with  Mr  Galsworthy  that  the  Zoo 
is  one  of  the  saddest  and  most  disgusting  sights  in  the  world. 
At  least,  I  know  that  I  never  leave  the  Zoo,  which  I  seldom  visit, 
because  it  hurts  me,  without  feeling  a  partner  in  a  national  crime. 
You  can  defend  vivisection  by  saying  that  it  has  valuable  medical 
results.  I  know  nothing  about  that,  but  you  cannot  defend  the 
Zoo  by  saying  that  you  give  some  snivelling  boy  an  opportunity 
to  know  what  the  mandril  looks  like.  What  is  the  use  (I  put  it  on 
the  lowest  ground,  that  of  use)  of  knowing  what  a  mandril  looks 
like  ?  And  if  it  is  of  any  use,  is  that  use  not  counterbalanced  by 
the  poison  poured  into  that  boy,  which  is  that  he  shall  consent  to 
the  life-long  imprisonment  of  a  helpless  creature  ? 

This  Zoo  question  was  discussed  in  the  Weekly  Dispatch  some 
years  ago;  I  think  that  one  of  the  points,  in  defence,  was  that  most 
of  the  animals  were  born  in  the  Zoo,  and,  knowing  not  liberty, 
could  not  be  unhappy.  That  may  be,  even  if  nothing  in  you 
answers  when  you  look  into  the  eyes  of  the  animals  in  those  empty 
cages  where  there  is  nothing  to  do,  when  all  their  nature,  thousands 
of  generations  of  it,  is  calling  in  their  blood  to  hunt  and  to  fly. 
Is  not  the  test  this:  would  you  be  satisfied  if  at  birth  your  son 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

were  placed  in  a  room  eight  feet  by  four,  and  told  to  grow  up  in  it  ? 
Do  you  really  believe  that  he  would  be  content  when  he  reached 
manhood  ?  even  if  he  had  never  known  freedom.  The  truth  is 
represented  by  opinions  such  as  that  of  the  secretary  of  the  Zoo, 
Doctor  Chalmers  Mitchell,  who  summed  up  Mr  Galsworthy's  attack 
on  the  Zoo  by  saying:  *  Mr  Galsworthy  knows  nothing  about 
the  subject.  His  attack  is  rubbish,  pure  rubbish.'  It  may  be  that, 
on  second  thoughts,  Doctor  Chalmers  Mitchell  might  find  one  or 
two  more  arguments  to  put  up  against  Mr  Galsworthy,  but  this 
one,  while  not  lacking  in  force,  somehow  fails  to  convince.  One 
is  more  impressed  by  the  argument  of  Mr  J.  D.  Hamlyn,  an 
animal  trainer,  who  said:  'After  the  war,  the  business  of  importing 
animals  will  go  on  exactly  as  it  did  before.  In  the  first  place,  too 
much  capital  is  at  stake,  too  much  money  has  been  expended  to 
give  up  the  trade  altogether.'  The  only  comment  I  have 
to  make  on  this  is  that  this  argument  was  continually  used, 
first  in  the  West  Indies,  and  later  in  the  southern  states  of 
America,  when  it  was  suggested  that  we  should  do  away  with 
slavery. 

Yes,  the  Zoo  carries  on  to-day  the  old  tradition  of  Victorian 
brutality.  But  enough  of  the  Zoo,  and  of  its  visitors,  so  like  the 
yokels  at  a  fair,  that  guffaw  with  their  heads  through  horse  collars. 
I  would  rather  think  that  in  a  few  of  those  Victorian  places,  sweet 
old  ladies  in  mauve  silk  and  lace  serve  tea  in  Rockingham  cups, 
which  they  dust  themselves  for  fear  of  Sarah  Jane.  One  such 
place  is  Crescent  Grove.  That  is  the  sort  of  place  one  would 
like  to  live  in,  when  one  feels  rather  older.  It  is  near  Clapham 
Common,  and,  of  course,  it  is  a  blind  alley,  so  that  no  rude  traffic 
may  pass  up  and  down  when  the  milkman  has  finished  his  melodious 
round.  The  houses  are  clean,  stuccoed,  comfortable.  The 
knockers  are  cleaned  every  day.  The  glass  is  cleaned  often,  the 
curtains  are  changed,  and  I  am  sure  that  when  they  go  up,  a  whiff 
of  lavender  spreads.  Crescent  Grove  is,  perhaps,  a  little  too 
clean;  in  those  rooms  where  everything  has  its  place,  just  as  in 
the  past  every  one  had  his  place,  there  must  be  so  much  order  and 
regularity  of  life  that,  as  Mirbeau  said :  'On  doit  rudement  s'embeter 
114 


STONES 

la-dedans.'  Still,  at  the  very  end  of  Crescent  Grove,  there  is  one 
house  that  should  be  preserved  as  a  monument  of  its  period.  Of 
course,  it  is  double-fronted;  in  front  are  planted  evergreens,  and 
there  is  a  drive.  By  the  side  runs  a  large  garden  beyond  a  wall; 
on  the  other  side  of  the  wall  one  hears  children  at  play.  That  is 
the  house  to  which  father  came  back  round  about  1860,  with  his 
top  hat  and  his  mutton-chop  whiskers.  If  this  description  does 
not  convince  you,  let  me  give  you  the  clinching  fact :  it  is  a  private 
road.  Yet  Crescent  Grove  stands  very  near  to  the  suburbs.  Not 
far  are  Streatham,  Tooting,  the  new  streets  of  Clapham  and 
Brixton.  Imbedded  among  the  new  streets  are  old  houses  with 
columns,  plaster  fronts,  stucco  mouldings,  squares  surrounding 
a  single  column  that  bears  a  moulting  golden  eagle,  but  the 
suburbs  are  overwhelming  them.  These  are  not  the  inner  suburbs, 
such  as  Brixton,  where  the  feeling  is,  on  the  whole,  one  of  poverty 
and  dirt.  Those  inner  suburbs  have  a  certain  vigour  of  coarse 
life;  thus,  the  Brixton  Road  is  a  place  of  immense  activity, 
notably  round  the  great,  open-air  ironmonger,  Williamson's 
Bonanza;  there  are  shops  and  shops,  nearly  all  of  the  multiple 
type,  Salmon  and  Gluckstein,  Maypole  Dairies,  Home  and  Colonials, 
the  shops  that  Private  Ortheris  must  have  raved  of  in  his  Indian 
delirium.  Likewise,  in  Kilburn,  where  the  Kilburn  Bon  Marche 
and  B.  B.  Evans  struggle  in  zealous  commercialism.  Those  inner 
suburbs  are  hardly  suburbs  now,  for  the  trams  run  through  them 
and  bleed  them  of  their  population ;  tubes  tap  them ;  everywhere 
the  motor-buses  stop.  The  true  suburbs  lie  farther  out.  You 
have  to  go  well  beyond  the  Brixton  Bon  Marche  before  you  can 
find  such  a  place  as  Streatham,  with  its  endless,  well-kept,  villa 
streets  of  red  brick  houses,  nearly  all  alike,  creeper  and  grass  plot 
complete.  Those  suburbs  outline  a  new  social  order;  with  a 
little  experience  you  can  easily  tell  the  thirty-five-pounds-a-year 
street  from  the  fifty-two-pounds-a-year  street;  you  come  with  a 
feeling  of  familiarity  upon  the  corner  house,  where  lives  the  doctor 
or  the  surgeon.  It  is  a  new  order,  for  all  those  houses  are  small, 
manageable,  clean,  modern,  in  every  way  satisfactory,  except  that 
they  are  all  alike,  made  for  people  who  may  not  be  all  alike,  but 

"5 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

tend  so  to  become.  For  if  one  buys  one's  food,  one's  clothes,  one's 
furniture  at  the  same  big,  local  store,  and  if  one  takes  one's  literature 
from  the  same  bookstall,  one  attains  to  a  sort  of  nationality.  But 
it  is  not  the  nationality  of  the  village,  where  local  effort  can  develop 
into  art,  because  it  develops  slowly  and  creeps  back  upon  itself. 
In  the  suburbs  everything  is  supplied  on  the  model  of  central 
London,  and  is  turned  out  in  hundreds  of  thousands  by  machines. 
Perhaps  the  houses  are  made  by  machines.  Maybe,  one  day  the 
people  will  be  made  by  machines.  Near  those  streets,  all  alike, 
generally  survives  an  older  quarter  of  poor  streets  where  live  the 
'  little  women,'  the  sweep,  the  turncock,  the  dependents  of  the 
semi-poor;  there,  also,  small  shopkeepers  live  by  undercutting 
the  big  stores.  They  do  this  by  selling  the  vegetables  that  are 
too  stale  for  the  stores,  by  washing  the  linen  which  cannot  be  sent 
to  the  steam  laundry  because  it  would  fall  to  pieces,  and  especially 
by  lowering  their  own  standard  of  living  to  the  lowest  possible 
level.  They  are  the  last  ramparts  of  suburban  individualism, 
and  they  will  not  last  long.  As  time  goes  on,  the  bigger  villa 
streets,  many  of  whose  houses  have  pretensions,  exemplified  by 
their  architecture  of  concrete  and  tile,  by  their  barbarous 
roofs  which  make  evil,  dusty  corners  in  the  rooms,  by  the 
select  flowers  in  their  front  gardens,  will  turn  away  from 
those  little  shops  and,  more  and  more,  deal  with  Whiteley's 
and  Harrod's. 

Thus,  when  one  passes  through  London,  from  old  Victorian 
street  to  inner  suburb,  then  to  outer  suburb,  until  one  comes  to 
the  spreading  country  of  Tooting  Bee  Common,  when  one  has 
seen  the  homes  of  the  rich,  their  marble  solemnity,  when  one  has 
seen  those  of  the  poor  in  the  grimy  suburbs  that  cluster,  and 
emerges  at  last  into  those  clean  suburban  streets,  where  in  almost 
every  window  an  aspidistra  wilts  in  its  pot,  one  may  grow  a  little 
doubtful  of  the  social  revolution.  We  educate  the  poor,  and 
sometimes  we  give  them  their  chance:  the  next  step  is  the 
aspidistra.  The  aspidistra  goes  to  the  grammar  school;  clever 
aspidistra  wins  a  scholarship  and  goes  to  Oxford.  Then  a 
house  is  taken,  let  us  say,  in  Barkston  Gardens;  instead  of  the 
116 


STONES 

aspidistra  it  is  marguerites  in  the  window  boxes.  The  marguerite 
goes  to  Oxford  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  may  give  place  to 
a  lily  in  a  green  art-pot.  By  that  time  it  understands  nothing. 
If  it  retains  its  money,  the  marguerite  goes  on  having  marguerites 
potted  in  the  window-boxes  by  the  nurseryman;  if  it  loses  its 
money,  it  goes  back  to  the  aspidistra.  Upon  this  gloomy  botanical 
note  I  close  this  chapter. 


117 


IX 
CAFE  ROYAL 


CHAPTER  IX 

CAFE    ROYAL 

WHY  did  they  call  it  Cafe  Royal  ?  It  has  nothing  of  the  opulent 
white  and  gold  quality  which  naturally  would  go  with  such  a 
name,  nothing  expensive  or  elaborate.  Here  and  there,  in  the 
only  room  I  know,  namely,  the  cafe  itself,  is  an  escutcheon  im- 
pressed with  the  letter  N.  It  makes  one  think  of  Napoleon,  and  the 
name  Cafe  Royal  clashes  still  more.  But,  after  all,  that  matters  very 
little,  for  who  cares  what  the  Cafe  Royal  was  ?  or  under  whose 
auspices  it  was  founded.  I  suppose  that  for  antiquity  it  treads  upon 
the  heels  of  Verrey's;  it  has  a  flavour  of  1870  rather  than  1860; 
what  matters  much  more  is  that  the  Cafe  Royal  always  savours 
of  the  day,  that  it  concentrates  within  itself  more  of  the  feeling  of 
the  day,  as  exemplified  by  current  art,  than  any  other  spot  in  this 
country.  Thus,  when  calling  this  chapter  Cafe  Royal,  I  do  not 
mean  to  devote  it  to  an  anecdotic  study  of  the  famous  tavern,  but 
rather  to  those  things  which  it  represents  and  contains,  to  some 
slight  impression  of  the  arts  as  they  develop,  flourish,  and  wilt  in 
this  city.  The  Cafe  itself  should  never  have  been  called  Royal, 
for  an  eternal  opposition  exists  between  the  pomp  of  such  a  name 
and  the  rebellious  young  arts;  in  no  essential  do  they  oppose  the 
royal  suggestion,  but  they  are  remote  therefrom,  live  in  a  world 
where  the  values  are  different,  not  related  to  class  or  fortune, 
artificial,  perhaps,  but  created  in  virtue  of  a  private  political 
economy.  Thus,  the  Cafe  Royal  should  have  been  called  some- 
thing dashing  and  picturesque,  such  as  'Cafe  des  Mille  Colonnes,' 
or  '  Cafe  de  la  Pomme  Vermeille.'  How  well  it  would  have 
looked,  sparsely  decorated  with  rubicund  apples  painted  by 
Cezanne !  As  it  is,  the  Cafe  Royal  is  a  very  large  room  in  Regent 
Street.  Its  ceiling,  a  mass  of  gold  scrollings  that  embrace  frescoes 
darkened  by  smoke  and  time  into  the  colour  of  old  masters,  is 
sustained  by  many  columns  with  a  golden  base  and  a  green  stem. 
Round  that  stem  intertwine  golden  leaves  from  which  hang 
golden  grapes.  The  effect  of  the  Cafe  is  one  of  rather  excessive 

L.M.  I  121 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

gilding:  the  walls  are  crowded  with  gilt  figures  and  baskets  of 
flowers  that  leave  space  only  for  many  mirrors;  as  if  the  wall 
had  been  hidden  away  at  the  behest  of  some  obscure  modesty. 
Yet  the  effect  is  pleasant,  for  this  gold  is  old  and  tarnished.  It 
has  nothing  blatant,  and  the  whole  effect  is  one  of  comfortable 
decency,  as  if  this  excessive  room  had  been  built  by  a  parvenu, 
but  had  been  lived  in  so  long  by  his  successors  as  to  lose  the 
parvenu  spirit.  The  furnishing,  plain  tables  with  marble  tops, 
long  seats  with  red  plush  backs,  also  resolve  themselves  into 
good-humoured  comfort,  while,  at  the  end,  a  prince  of  bars  with 
something  like  ten  score  bottles,  each  one  filled  with  something 
individual,  produces  an  impression  of  eclectic  welcome. 

The  Cafe  Royal  may  have  been  built  to  astound,  but  nowadays 
it  is  just  the  comfortable  background  of  people  who  like  to  drink 
a  little,  to  pay  moderately,  and  to  talk  enormously.  The  conver- 
sations at  the  Cafe  Royal  are  not,  probably,  such  as  would  make 
a  good  book  of  memoirs,  but  its  mixed  public  has,  at  one  time  or 
another,  numbered  everybody  who  did  something  (whatever 
that  may  mean),  so  that  many  good  things  and  many  spiteful 
ones  are  spoken  every  day  under  its  golden  roof.  Before  the  war, 
the  violent  young  men  and  the  much  more  violent  young  women 
seemed  to  meet  there  every  night,  with  an  almost  sacramental  air, 
to  discuss,  that  is  to  scarify,  reputations.  That  was  good,  for 
Renan  was  right  when  he  said  that  if  a  young  man,  aged  twenty, 
had  not  always  ready  a  mouthful  of  insults  for.  his  predecessors, 
he  would  pronounce  no  judgments  fit  to  be  heard  when  he  attained 
the  age  of  forty. 

This  does  not  mean  that  the  Cafe  Royal  is  a  literary  cafe,  or  an 
artistic  cafe.  The  literary,  dramatic,  and  pictorial  elements  are 
certainly  stronger  there  than  in  any  other  London  resort,  but  at 
any  time  you  may  see  there  the  strangest  assembly:  foreigners, 
a  great  many;  smart  people  who  are  seeing  life;  and  very  dull, 
ordinary,  fat  men  who  stop  on  their  way  from  business  or  shop 
to  have  a  drink  before  dinner.  At  dinner  time  the  room  is  not 
itself,  for  half  of  it  sees  its  marble  tables  covered  with  cloths, 
which  means  that  eating  proceeds,  and  eating  does  not,  so  well  as 

122 


THE  CAFF:  ROYAL 


To  face  pagt  122 


CAFE  ROYAL 

drinking,  favour  turbulent  debate.  It  is  just  before  dinner,  and 
especially  after  dinner,  that  the  Cafe"  Royal  enters  upon  its  true 
function:  to  provide  a  pleasant,  cheap  place,  fairly  noisy,  fairly 
smoky,  and  fairly  comfortable,  where  the  young  arts  may  meet 
and  joust.  During  the  war  it  did  not  quite  do  this,  for  many 
of  the  young  men  had  joined  the  army,  and  it  was  strange  suddenly 
to  recognise  over  a  tunic,  in  a  well-kept,  well-brushed  head,  the 
outlines  of  somebody  whom  once  one  knew  with  endless  locks, 
whiskers,  or  a  beard.  Even  in  khaki  they  did  what  they  could. 
Military  discipline  did  not  completely  dominate  those  rebellious 
beings ;  their  moustaches  were  either  a  little  more  luxuriant  or  very 
much  more  hogged  than  usual.  The  Cafe  Royal  platoon  was  still 
faintly  noticeable. 

Some,  however,  were  not  in  khaki,  for  theirs  was  not  a  very  fit 
generation,  and  even  now  many  a  table  throws  back  a  memory 
to  1914.  In  those  days  the  frequent  visitor  to  the  Cafe  Royal 
soon  knew  many  people  by  sight,  and  if  he  was  of  that  world,  or 
had  somebody  to  guide  him,  he  soon  could  pick  out  those  who 
were  celebrated  and  those  who  were  notorious;  with  time,  he 
even  came  to  recognise  those  who  were  extremely  well  known. 
I  do  not  know  if,  nowadays,  one  often  sees  at  the  Cafe"  Royal, 
Mr  Jacob  Epstein,  but  once  it  was  difficult  to  detach  one's  eyes 
from  the  sleepy  strength  of  his  heavy  profile.  One  wanted  to 
look  into  those  eyes  with  the  thick  lids,  in  which  strangely  mingled 
so  much  detachment  and  so  much  kinetic  energy.  He  was  seldom 
alone;  there  was  always  a  little  Epstein  group  about  his  table. 
Indeed,  it  is  a  characteristic  of  the  Cafe  Royal  that  few  people  sit 
alone.  They  form  groups.  One  I  remember  well.  It  always 
contained  a  tall  young  man  with  very  long,  thin  features,  and 
hair  grown  low  about  the  cheek;  he  had  a  fancy  for  clothes  faintly 
1860  in  feeling,  notably,  for  stocks.  There  was  an  extremely 
beautiful  girl,  thin,  dark,  and  languid  as  some  warm  Italian  grey- 
hound. There  was  a  young  man  who  wore  a  velvet  coat,  whose 
fair  hair  fell  in  long  wisps  upon  his  collar,  a  strange  young  man, 
with  a  peculiar  grayish  skin  and  an  air  of  nervous  excitement. 
Round  these  moved  other  figures  less  definite,  but  all  of  them 

123 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

young:  square  men  in  knickerbockers,  with  short  pipes  stuck 
precisely  in  the  middle  of  their  faces;  girls,  outrageously  florid 
or  eloquently  simple,  round  whose  long  necks  hung  the  flowered 
yokes  of  Chelsea,  on  whose  hands  clustered  many  rings  of  turquoise 
and  aquamarine,  or  whose  hands  were  virgin  of  all  decoration 
save  that  of  black  finger-nails.  The  smart  people  used  to  watch 
them  steadily  and  feel  that,  at  last,  they  were  really  seeing  life. 

Sometimes  they  saw  people  whose  names  could  serve  as 
conversation  at  the  morrow's  lunch  party.  Sometimes  they  caught 
sight  of  Mr  C.  R.  W.  Nevinson,  and  could  describe  his  square 
figure,  his  rather  blunt,  pleasant  face  with  the  bright,  live,  brown 
eyes.  It  does  one  good  to  look  at  Mr  Nevinson,  though,  nowadays, 
something  oppressed  has  crept  into  his  expression;  there  is,  in 
those  rather  thick  features,  a  sense  of  life  and  desire.  With  him 
sometimes  goes  his  wife,  slight,  white  and  rose,  and  bending  a 
little  under  the  heavy  sunshine  of  her  hair. 

Until  recently  the  Cafe  Royal  also  often  contained  Mr  Augustus 
John,  and  one  could  sit  for  a  long  time,  wondering  what  it  was 
gave  his  features  that  air  of  tautness.  There  is  always  about 
Mr  John  a  feeling  that  he  is  imprisoned  within  himself.  .  .  . 
Equally  with  Mr  Epstein  he  had  his  court,  young  men  in  a  state 
of  extreme  reverence,  and  other  men  who  preached  to  him  in 
attitudes  of  hostility  tinged  with  nervousness,  which  is  the  ordinary 
approach  to  the  successful  painter  of  those  who  are  less  successful. 
I  think  that,  now  and  then,  Mr  Arthur  Symons  used  to  draw 
them  away,  so  as  to  procure  for  Mr  John  a  greater  peace.  It  was 
as  if  he  were  trying  to  create  about  him  an  atmosphere  of  hush. 
At  the  Caff  Royal  this  is  not  easily  done.  Notably,  it  was  difficult 
to  create  hush  among  the  reverential  young  men,  for  I  suspect 
that  they  all  wanted  to  know  what  Mr  John  thought  of  their 
work,  that  is  meant  to  tell  him  what  he  ought  to  think.  The 
young  women  were  more  easily  managed,  and  it  is  interesting  to 
note  that  they  tended  to  approximate  in  appearance  to  the  John 
type.  Nearly  all  were  what  the  vulgar  call  plain,  in  some  cases 
because  they  were  perfectly  beautiful:  that  which  is  perfectly 
beautiful  is  severe  and  separate;  it  does  not  arouse  desire,  it 
124 


CAFE  ROYAL 

arouses  respect,  and  this  most  of  humanity  cannot  forgive.  Those 
strange  young  women,  apparently  long-legged  and  long-armed, 
in  their  simply-cut  high  frocks  that  hung  straight  from  shoulder 
to  ankle,  young  women  with  hair  plainly  banded,  rather  long 
noses,  strong  chins,  thick,  dark  mouths,  like  open  fruits.  They 
seemed  to  come  straight  out  of  some  sketch  in  Donegal. 

There  were  many  others,  too.  Now  and  then  one  caught 
sight  of  Mr  Wyndham  Lewis  who,  nowadays,  is  plump,  but 
in  those  was  tall  and  white  and  rather  slim,  often  silent  and 
generally  weary;  it  was  an  education  in  negligence  to  watch  the 
depressed  droop  of  the  cigarette  stump  which  generally  hung 
from  his  underlip.  There  were  others,  too,  a  woman  with  small, 
humorous  eyes  and  a  pleasant  coppery  complexion,  who  wore 
turbans  of  purple  silk  and  gold,  who  never  thought  or  spoke  an 
evil  thing  of  any  creature  alive.  One  saw  Mr  Gertler,  very  young 
and  seductive,  perhaps  a  little  conscious  of  it;  Mr  Gilbert  Cannan, 
oozing  defiance  from  every  sharp  angle  and  confining  his  con- 
versation to  this  process.  The  other  young  writers  came  now  and 
then:  Mr  Swinnerton  before  he  grew  his  beard,  Mr  Hugh 
Walpole,  who  always  seemed  slightly  out  of  place  in  so  ill-regulated 
a  spot.  People  less  definable  float  through  my  mind:  a  young 
girl  who  had  been  told  that  she  looked  like  a  Russian,  and  thence- 
forth appeared  attired  in  a  red  sarafan;  a  young  man  with  black 
locks  massed  upon  his  eyebrows,  locks  he  often  tossed  back  to 
show  the  running  water  of  his  pale  eyes.  There  was  a  young 
woman  who  believed  in  asceticism;  as  she  looked  rather  like  a 
brick,  I  was  told  that  her  beliefs  had  never  been  put  to  a  rude  test. 
There  was  another  young  woman,  too,  who  seriously  informed 
any  marble  table  that  she  believed  in  reincarnation,  and  that 
within  her  breathed  the  soul  of  Shelley.  Nearly  everybody 
painted,  some  wrote  verse,  a  few  ventured  on  prose;  the  talk 
was  of  art  and  of  sinners  against  art.  Swiftly  they  passed  from 
studio  scandal  to  the  declarations,  manifestoes,  proclamations 
which  made  the  arts  sound  foolish  in  1914,  but  actually  were 
evidences  of  their  vigour.  Indeed,  the  modern  forms  of  art  tend 
to  shock  the  Philistine:  I  am  not  with  him;  I  like  my  paint  wet. 

125 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

The  old  arts  are  unkind  to  the  young  arts.  Struck  by  a  certain 
wilful  outrageous  ness  which  often  overlays  talent  and  in  the 
beginning  always  heralds  it,  the  old  arts  make  as  much  fun  of  the 
new  arts,  as  the  old  arts  made  of  the  older  when  they  were  young. 
Some  of  my  readers  may  remember  Mr  Epstein's  rather  theoretical 
Venus,  at  whose  feet  reposed  a  wheel.  It  was  an  abstract  piece  of 
sculpture,  but,  however  abstract,  I  think  it  was  a  little  harsh  of 
Mrs  Aria  to  describe  it  as  a  sick  penguin  sitting  on  a  broken 
bicycle.  The  truth  is  that  the  modern  forms  of  art  are  not  as 
wilful  or  as  intentionally  shocking  as  their  adepts  choose  to  make 
out.  It  may  be  true  that  most  schools,  from  the  impressionists 
onwards,  have  formed  round  one  man  who  had  something  original 
to  say  in  an  original  way,  and  that  most  of  the  pupils,  having 
nothing  original  to  say,  found  it  necessary  to  say  it  in  a  violently 
original  way.  That  is  true  to  a  certain  extent;  truer,  perhaps, 
is  it  to  say  that  *  genius  creates  the  taste  with  which  it  is  enjoyed.' 
Thus,  I  think  it  quite  as  likely  that  people  like  Manet  created  the 
taste  for  impressionism,  just  as  Wagner  created  a  taste  for  music 
in  reaction  against,  let  us  say,  Rossini.  Nature,  after  all,  is  only 
a  thing  which  one  conceives,  and  not  a  thing  which  really  exists; 
it  varies  with  the  eye  that  beholds  it,  and  if  a  man  sincerely  and 
violently  feels  that  trees  are  pink,  then  to  him  they  are  pink,  and 
if  he  has  art  enough  to  translate  his  temperament  into  those  pink 
trees,  then  the  people  who  can  understand  him  will  learn  to  see 
trees  like  him,  that  is,  pink.  We  need  not  stress  this,  because  it 
is  an  extreme  case,  but  I  submit  that  the  modern  forms  of  art, 
during  the  last  dozen  years,  have  all  of  them  tended  to  express 
nature  on  the  lines  of  certain  conventions,  and  that  instead  of 
taking  up  an  attitude  of  contempt,  it  was  easy  to  understand 
these  conventions,  therefore,  to  understand  the  artist,  therefore, 
to  collect  from  the  canvas  the  impression  he  painted  there.  Here, 
I  will  be  told  by  the  Philistine:  '  Why  should  I  see  that  a  face 
looks  like  a  cube  ?  '  Well,  nobody  wants  to  force  him  to  see  a 
face  as  a  cube  if  he  doesn't  want  to,  but  one  is  entitled  to  point  out 
to  him  that  he  has  already  accepted  many  conventions.  He  is 
quite  willing  to  look  at  Gainsborough's  '  Blue  Boy,'  and  to  see  it 
126 


CAFE  ROYAL 

as  a  human  figure,  though  it  has  only  surface  and  not  volume. 
He  is  quite  willing  to  look  at  Venus  of  Milo  and  to  accept  it  as  a 
reproduction  of  a  beautiful  woman,  though  it  has  no  colour.  He 
is  quite  willing  to  go  to  a  play  the  action  of  which  extends 
over  five  years,  and  to  see  this  action  condensed  into  two 
and  a  half  hours.  The  public,  has  to  accept  the  arts  con- 
ventionally, because  the  arts  do  not  reproduce  nature,  they 
interpret  it. 

It  may,  therefore,  be  suggested  that  our  young  post-im- 
pressionists, futurists,  and  cubists  were  badly  treated  by  the  public, 
for  the  public  never  tried  to  understand  the  new  conventions  on 
which  they  worked.  With  all  the  power  of  my  sincerity,  and  in 
the  name  of  such  honesty  as  may  be  in  me,  I  assure  my  readers 
that  if  they  will  take  the  trouble  to  master  the  conventions 
the  work  can  be  interpreted.  I  possess  an  excellent  non- 
representational  picture,  by  Mr  Wadsworth,  inspired  by  the 
roofs  of  a  Yorkshire  village;  it  is  entirely  composed  of  black  and 
white  planes.  When,  lately,  this  was  shown  to  a  friend,  she 
asked  why  she  should  be  told  to  admire  a  set  of  decayed  dominoes. 
But  the  picture  is  not  made  up  of  decayed  dominoes ;  it  is  a  highly 
simplified  impression  of  walls  and  roofs,  and  when  you  have 
sympathetically  sought  for  what  we  may  call  the  key  plane,  the 
picture  becomes  absolutely  obvious. 

But  what  if  it  were  not  obvious  ?  Many  of  the  modern  men, 
such  as  Mr  Wadsworth,  Mr  McKnight  KaufFer,  Mr  Wyndham 
Lewis,  do  not  aspire  to  represent  anything  at  all.  What  they 
want  to  do  is  to  sketch  or  paint  an  interesting  pattern.  Mr  Ezra 
Pound  has  put  the  attitude  clearly  in  his  book,  Gaudier  Brzeska, 
where  he  says,  more  or  less :  '  When  you  hear  a  sonata  played, 
you  do  not  say,  "  Oh,  what  an  eloquent  reproduction  of  the  waves 
upon  the  shore!  "  or,  "  This  is  where  the  sheep  begin  to  baa." 
What  you  do  is  to  ask  yourself  whether  this  combination  of  sounds 
is  pleasant  or  moving.  That  is  the  freedom  we  wish  to  find  in 
painting  or  sculpture.  We  are  not  interested  in  painting  the 
Mayor  of  Leeds  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  it  clear  that  he  is  a 
mayor,  possibly  of  Leeds,  but  we  are  interested  in  setting  together 

127 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

lines  and  coloured  surfaces,  irrespective  of  any  meaning,  and  to 
be  judged  on  that,  according  to  whether  these  lines  and  colours 
produce  a  pleasant  sensation.' 

This  position  appears  to  me  above  attack.  The  technical 
improvements  in  painting,  which  began  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
producing  Rembrandt,  Raphael,  Velasquez,  and,  in  due  course, 
Sir  Edward  Poynter,  seem  to  have  set  a  heavy  yoke  upon  the 
painter's  neck,  for  the  painter  grew  enthralled  by  technique, 
became  more  and  more  inclined  to  represent  a  baby  so  life-like 
that  everybody  expected  it  to  howl;  he  grew  liable  to  lose  sight 
of  the  one  thing  that  matters,  namely,  that  to  represent  a  baby  is 
nothing,  and  to  represent  the  artist  through  the  baby,  everything. 
(If  I  am  wrong,  consider  a  picture  by  Mr  Clausen  and  a  photograph 
by  Mr  Park;  Mr  Clausen  knows  how  to  paint,  but  Mr  Park 
will  far  more  exactly  reproduce  the  sitter,  do  it  quicker,  and  much 
more  cheaply.)  The  thesis  of  the  modern  artist,  of  which  I  am 
trying  to  give  an  impression,  therefore  involves  that  while  we 
bow  to  the  undeniable  greatness  of  men  such  as  Rembrandt, 
Botticelli,  Leonardo,  we  wonder  whether  a  greater  emancipation 
from  their  technique  might  not  have  allowed  them  to  soar  higher 
into  the  abstract  region  where  none  save  an  artist  can  breathe. 
The  plea  is  that  in  a  more  abstract  field  they  might  have  been 
still  greater. 

Undeniably,  the  modern  forms  of  art  have  emancipated 
themselves  too  much  from  technical  restrictions.  It  is  dangerous 
to  have  too  much  technique;  it  is  dangerous  to  have  too  little, 
and  I  could  not  say  who  suavely  broods  in  the  golden  mean.  Still, 
when  we  consider  what  a  dead  and  damnable  thing  technique 
alone  can  be,  when  we  consider  the  annual  mortuary  at  Burlington 
House,  when  we  stand  awhile  before  a  work  of  Mr  Frank  Dicksee, 
and  stare  incredulously  at  Sir  Luke  Fildes's  '  The  Doctor,'  or 
attempt  to  solve  the  Hon.  John  Collier's  psycho-pictorial  mysteries, 
we  are  indeed  assured  that  though  technique  may  exclude  a  man 
both  from  heaven  and  from  hell,  it  shall,  for  certain,  land  him  in 
purgatory. 

I  remember  very  well  the  first  '  advanced  '  pictures  I  ever 
128 


CAFE  ROYAL 

saw.  They  were  twelve  impressions  of  a  bridge  over  a  brook  by 
Claude  Monet.  That  must  have  been  nearly  twenty  years  ago, 
and  I  thought  them  very  beautiful.  It  is  strange  that  nowadays 
they  seem  so  tame.  But  it  does  not  matter  to  me  that  I  thought 
them  beautiful  then,  just  as  when  I  first  saw  a  Matisse  I  thought 
it  interesting,  that  my  first  Gauguin,  with  its  queer  brown 
figures  stirred  me;  it  matters  to  me  that  when  the  futurists  came 
to  town,  Mr  Marinetti  did  not  strike  me  as  a  marionette,  and  that 
later  all  the  others,  cubists,  boulists,  imagists,  vorticists,  were 
taken  by  me  as  honest  men.  You  may  call  me  a  fool;  you  may 
even  think  worse  of  me  and  say  that  I  was  so  anxious  to  be  in  the 
movement  that  I  liked  every  movement;  I  prefer  to  say  that  I 
was  always  ready  to  try  to  understand  a  new  pictorial  convention. 
When  I  cease  to  be  able  to  do  that,  when  I  cease  to  see  in  painting 
that  Mr  Wadsworth  is  deeply  interesting,  in  literature,  that  Mr 
James  Joyce  is  strikingly  individual,  when  I  am  Philistine  enough 
to  hang  a  painter  because  I  won't  hang  his  picture,  then,  indeed, 
shall  I  be  middle-aged  and  take  to  meals. 

The  years  between  1908  or  so  and  1914  were  some  of  the 
most  important  English  art  has  passed  through.  In  those  six  or 
seven  years,  for  the  first  time,  London  saw  the  post-impressionists, 
not  only  Matisse,  but  also  Cezanne  and  Picasso;  she  saw  the 
futurists,  the  singular  pictures  of  views  from  a  moving  train 
which,  faulty  as  they  were,  were  well  worth  painting,  because 
from  a  moving  train  one  does  see  things,  therefore  material  for 
art.  She  saw  Severini's  *  Pan-Pan  Dance,'  where  colour  and 
surface  dance  rather  than  men  and  women;  she  saw  the  coming 
of  Mr  Epstein,  first  in  the  statues  outside  the  British  Medical 
Association,  which  were  said  to  be  indecent  and  became  famous; 
she  also  saw  reproductions  of  Mr  Epstein's  Oscar  Wilde 
monument,  which  went  to  Paris  and  was  said  to  be  indecent  and 
became  kilted.  The  cubists  came  in  the  train  of  Mr  Metzinger. 
The  non-representational  movement  extended,  radiating  round 
Mr  Wyndham  Lewis,  impressing  many  men  and  women,  among 
whom,  in  those  days,  was  found  true  ability.  It  was 
a  breathless  and  beautiful  period,  where  everybody  was  under 

129 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

thirty  and  many  were  under  twenty,  when  people  painted  not 
for  art's  sake,  but  consciously  for  the  expression  of  self.  When 
that  self  was  feeble,  the  painting  was  feeble.  But  it  was  not  always 
so.  Many  ridiculous  things  were  done;  many  ridiculous  things 
were  said  in  the  Cafe"  Royal  and  out  of  it,  but,  as  Miss  May  Sinclair 
puts  it  very  well,  these  young  men  had  not  come  to  destroy  the 
pictorial  glories  of  the  past;  they  had  come  to  destroy  their 
imitators.  Conscious  of  their  period,  they  wanted  to 
express  it. 

Some  have  suggested  that  the  modern  forms  of  painting  were 
merely  outbreaks  of  youth,  that  these  movements  had  severed  the 
continuity  which  should  exist  between  one  period  and  another. 
Now  the  modern  young  man  is  generally  arrogant,  and  if  you  talked 
to  him  of  continuity  would  say,  perhaps:  *  I  don't  want  any 
ancestors;  I  am  an  ancestor.'  But  he  would  be  wrong.  From 
Monet  to  Matisse,  from  Matisse  to  the  early  Nevinson,  from  the 
early  Nevinson  to  the  modern  Wyndham  Lewis,  the  link  is  close. 
No  doubt  a  pen  better  versed  than  mine  could  link  Monet  with 
Giotto.  I  cannot;  for  I  find  it  difficult  to  think  back  further  than 
fifty  years. 

There  have  been  reactions.  One  of  the  most  notable  is  that 
of  Mr  Nevinson,  who  is  to-day  the  most  popular  of  the  young 
men,  the  one  who  has  been  most  completely  recognised  by  a 
broad  public.  Certainly  he  has  become  more  recognisable, 
though  I  am  not  of  those  who  think  that  his  work  has  thereby 
lost.  A  man  may  be  great  and  esoteric,  or  he  may  be  great  and 
lucid.  It  all  depends  on  the  way  in  which  the  dice  fall.  The 
several  exhibitions  of  Mr  Nevinson's  work,  during  the  war,  have 
shown  him  more  and  more  gaining  independence.  He  began 
by  adopting  one  of  the  cubist  conventions;  he  is  still  able  to  do 
so  when  he  wishes,  but  he  is  also  able  to  use  other  conventions, 
even  the  most  stereotyped,  when  his  subject  seems  to  demand  it. 
He  paints  pattern,  or  subject,  or  idea,  but  an  interesting  sidelight 
on  his  attitude  is  hatred  of  all  cliques.  In  the  preface  of  his  last 
exhibition,  he  bitterly  assails  the  people  who  seek  '  pure  form 
through  nothing  but  still  life,  endless  green  apples,  saucepans, 
130 


CAFE  ROYAL 

and  oranges,  picasized  and  cezanned  with  a  ponderous  and  self- 
conscious  sub-consciousness.'  He  hates  what  he  calls  the 
child-like  antics  and  the  gambolling  of  the  elect  of  Bloomsbury. 
He  may  not  be  quite  fair,  but  when  I  remember  the  various 
cliques  to  which  I  had  occasional  access,  the  Rhythm  clique,  for 
whom  nobody  existed  except  Anne  Estelle  Rice,  j.  D.  Fergusson, 
Jessie  Dismorr,  and  George  Banks  .  .  .  until  the  review  changed 
its  name,  when  most  of  these  people  ceased  to  exist  and  nobody 
but  Mr  Albert  Rutherston  was  granted  physical  likelihood, 
when  I  reflect  how  Mr  Nevinson  used  to  cluster  with  many  others 
in  a  cosy  cube,  only  to  be  driven  out  at  last  at  the  point  of  a  cone, 
when  I  reflect  upon  the  sombre  mystery  that  surrounds  the  adepts 
of  Mr  Roger  Fry  (a  mystery  recently  grown  less  sombre  with 
success),  I  am  assured  that  cliques  are  the  necessary  breeding- 
ground  of  talent  because  they  fortify  its  members  against  the 
cackling  Philistine.  But  they  are  also  the  thing  which  keeps 
talent  small  and  parochial  once  they  have  helped  it  to  grow. 
The  clique  is  the  nursery,  and  the  test  of  a  man  is 
whether  he  knows  when  he  is  grown  up.  The  art  clique 
is  like  journalism,  which  can  lead  you  anywhere  provided  you 
forsake  it. 

Most  of  the  cliques  have  their  being  in  Chelsea,  though 
Fitzroy  Square  and  the  Garden  City  occasionally  put  forward 
claims,  and  Bedford  Park  asserts  itself.  I  suspect  that  the  move- 
ment is  nowadays  away  from  Chelsea.  King's  Road  grows  every 
day  more  mercantile;  nothing  in  it  recalls  the  arts  except  a  slight 
excess  of  shops  which  sell  artists'  materials.  One  does  meet 
the  Chelsea  girl,  no  longer  in  a  jibbah,  but  more  likely  in  an 
eloquent  sweater,  with  her  hair  cut  short  and  her  feet  brogued, 
but  then  the  Chelsea  style  has  crept  into  many  circles.  You  can 
go  into  the  Chenil  Gallery,  where  you  will  always  find  works  by 
Mr  Augustus  John  and  Mr  Gill;  you  can  even  go  and  have 
lunch  at  the  Good  Intent,  but  somehow  Chelsea  will  not  seem  to 
you  very  Chelsea-ish.  Indeed,  there  are  rows  and  rows  of  studios 
near  Glebe  Place,  Church  Street,  Redcliffe  Square,  in  all  sorts  of 
odd  back-yards  and  shanties,  but  the  whole  thing  does  not  hold 


A  LONDON  MOSAIC 

together.  At  the  Good  Intent,  for  instance,  you  will  find  a  small, 
quiet  restaurant,  decorated  with  old  furniture,  pictures  that  may 
have  been  advanced  once  upon  a  time,  a  jolly  old  pug,  very  fat 
and  wheezing,  its  portraits  on  the  wall,  grossly  flattered,  with  a 
mauve  ribbon  round  its  neck;  you  will  see  at  the  tables  mainly 
women  who  live  at  local  diggings,  rather  tired  and  lonely  looking, 
as  women  grow  when  they  live  in  diggings  and  toast  muffins  on 
the  gas  stove. 

No,  Chelsea  is  nowadays  too  successful  to  be  a  locality  for 
artists.  Cheyne  Walk  has  become  too  famous  and  too  rich,  for 
artists  cannot  live  together,  unless  it  is  in  a  sort  of  Alsatia  where 
you  must  pay  your  footing  in  such  coin  as  the  keeper  thinks  fit. 
Nowadays,  the  arts  tend  to  scatter.  They  can  be  found  in  Chalk 
Farm,  even  in  Paddington,  some  say  in  Bayswater,  though  this  is 
not  likely.  They  tend  to  live  more  privately  than  they  do  in  Paris, 
where  half  the  day  seems  to  be  spent  at  the  Lilas.  (Oh,  how  I 
hate  the  Lilas !  The  last  time  I  went  there,  there  was  an  enormous 
crowd;  a  hairy  Russian  philosopher  stood  on  my  right  foot  while 
he  read  bad  French  translations  from  the  Sanskrit;  meanwhile, 
two  young  people  stood  on  my  left  foot  and  made  love.)  In 
London  the  arts  meet  at  their  communal  places,  in  certain 
restaurants  which  they  discover  and  then  forsake,  at  the  Coq  d'Or, 
at  little  dancing  clubs.  If  only  the  Philistine  hated  them  more, 
they  might  cling  closer. 

Still,  the  arts  are  not,  in  London,  as  absent  and  ignored  as  the 
foreigner  likes  to  think.  It  is  true,  as  Mr  Nevinson  says,  that 
owing  chiefly  to  our  Press,  to  our  loathsome,  tradition-loving 
public  schools  and  our  antiquity-stinking  universities,  the  average 
Englishman  is  not  merely  suspicious  of  the  new  in  all  intellectual 
and  artistic  experiment,  but  he  is  mentally  trained  to  be  so  un- 
sportsmanlike as  to  try  to  kill  every  new  endeavour  in  embryo. 
It  is  true,  but  it  does  not  matter.  The  arts  are  vigorous,  and  in  the 
end,  those  who  came  to  kill  stay  to  buy.  That  will  be  seen  as 
time  goes  on. 

Is  it,  I  wonder,  a  symptom  of  the  English  attitude  to  the  arts, 
that  the  chapter  which  concerns  them  should,  in  the  words  of 
132 


h»-i     rT  I 


CAFE  ROYAL 

Mr  Henry  James,  drag  far  in  the  dusty  rear  of  this  book  ?  Perhaps, 
though  London  of  to-day  is  so  vivid  and  so  eloquent,  so  full  of 
sharp  colour  and  true  line  that,  when  I  consider  her  music,  I  am 
inclined  to  think  that  she  would  not  have  attained  her  crisp  and 
harmonious  form  if  some  creative  instinct  within  her  humorous, 
pessimistic,  and  languid  people  had  not  presided  over  her  birth, 
and  favoured  her  composite  life. 


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